Method to remotely query, safely measure, and securely communicate configuration information of a networked computational device

Abstract

The invention disclosed herein enables a collection of computers and associated communications infrastructure to offer a new communications process which allows a requestor to receive configuration information of a computational device from a responder. The requestor first sends query documents that contain queries for configuration information of a computational device to the responder; the responder automatically collects the answers for the queries and sends a response document that contains the configuration information of the computational device to the requestor. The queries are written in a formal descriptive language which is transparent, safe for network evaluation, and extensible, and the configuration reader of the responder can parse the queries and automatically invoke a set of standard inspectors to obtain the corresponding configuration information.

1 . A communications network, comprising: 
 a computational device;    a requester of configuration information of said computational device; and    a responder associated with said computational device further comprising:    a configuration reader for retrieving configuration information of said computational device;    wherein configuration information is securely transferred from said responder to said requestor.