Cisco Technology, Inc.

Richard W Pratt

Shankar Natarajan

Ramanathan Kavasseri

Praveen Joshi

John Lautmann

Sankha Basu

A manufacturing method enables the manufacture of a remotely controlled network device management system. The manufacturing method includes the steps of obtaining a software program, obtaining a downloadable unit (e.g. an applet) configured to communicate with the software program, compiling the software program into a binary file, embedding the downloadable unit into the binary file, and loading the binary file with the embedded downloadable unit onto the network device. A management method enables a remote client to manage the network device. The management method includes the steps of receiving from a remote client a request to manage a software program which has a binary file with an embedded downloadable unit, locating the downloadable unit embedded in the binary file, extracting the downloadable unit from the binary file, and forwarding the downloadable unit to the remote client.

System and method for remote device management

Methods and devices are disclosed for changing the configuration state of a network device such as a router, a switch or a similar device without the need for a person to interpret a textual diff. According to some aspects of the invention, a programmatic diff file that includes the output of two comparisons is used as an input file to a program that 'rolls back' the current configuration state to a prior configuration state. According to other aspects of the invention, the output of a single comparison is input to an 'incremental diff' process, which adds new commands to a configuration state. According to preferred aspects of the invention, the output files generated by the comparison processes preserve the hierarchical context of each command in a programmatic format that is usable as direct input by the network device or by another device (such as a host controlled by a network administrator) that performs the incremental diff.

Using context-sensitive intelligent diffs to modify router configurations

A method and apparatus parses a command using a tree of acceptable command tokens. Each token is matched to a node in the tree, and upon discovering a match, descendant nodes of the matched node are used to parse the remaining tokens in the command received. When the command is fully parsed, or as the command is being parsed, pointers to nodes of the tree corresponding to a command parsed are stored along with a token from each such node matching the command token for use by the next command to be parsed. When the next command is received, the stored tokens are compared with each command token in the command until the tokens do not match the command token. The remainder of the command token is then parsed using the tree starting with the node corresponding to the last stored token that matched a command token.

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Danville, CA, United States of America

Richard W Pratt