Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Roland J Ayala

Ralph A Lipe

Dale Alan Sather

Douglas Keith Brubacher

Shannon J Chan

Kosar Akram Jaff

John M Gehlsen

Thomas W Kuehnel

William G Parry

Guillaume Simonnet

Gary Paolo Raden

Kenneth H Cooper

Guillaume Simmonet

Guillaume Simonner

The present invention relates to a system and method for configuring and managing network devices. The arrival (and departure) of devices on a network can be detected by a monitor. Upon detection, network devices can be simply and dynamically configured with little or no end-user intervention, for instance by automatically loading device drivers and allocating resources for the devices. Furthermore, network devices can be associated with other network devices such as a personal computer to facilitate seamless integration of network devices with a computer operating system.

Simple and dynamic configuration of network devices

An input including information specifying criteria for selecting computer resources is processed to produce an output comprising one or more function instances associated with computer resources satisfying the criteria. Included in each of the one or more function instances are metadata and information that specifies a mechanism for accessing a computer resource associated with the function instance.

Uniform resource discovery

Data associated with a function instance corresponding to a resource on one computer system is published for use on another computer system. A function instance is created on the other computer system using the published data.

Uniform resource discovery with multiple computers

In response to receiving a request for function instances, underlying function instances are identified using API layer data. The requested function instances are then created based on the underlying function instances.

Uniform resource discovery and API layering

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Woodinville, WA, United States of America

Roland J Ayala