An extensible architecture for network-attached device management

The development of network-attached devices has ushered in an era of autonomous, multi-function equipment demanding minimal human interaction: the only requirements are data and electricity. Despite these advances, these machines continue underutilized in network environments due to operating system limitations regarding the management of these devices. These limitations force the use of these devices via other network hardware, such as a server, that manage the device access and data. While effective, this results in increased resource consumption and ignores the capabilities presented by network-attached devices. In order to facilitate optimal utilization of these devices, we have designed a new, extensible management architecture for all network-attached devices. This architecture, presented here, supports the central management of network-attached devices while allowing client machines access to the device without intermediate server hardware. Implementation of this paradigm on test networks has decreased resource consumption - especially bandwidth - considerably.