Abstract: A management information base (MIB) attribute discriminator process is employed for organizing MIB attributes for system network management station (NMS) software. The NMS software monitors and configures network devices having a system object identifier. The devices have agents comprised of software running on an embedded device microprocessor wherein the parameters that an agent can control are described in a management information base (MIB). A MIB definition text file is provided with entries described by grammar and tokens. The MIB definition file is parsed with an information parser class. MIB data is then stored in memory, described by grammar and tokens. The MIB data is then accessed through a MIB definitions interface and using the MIB data with software of the NMS.

Abstract: A computer network management software program in a network management device, with a device description language (DDL) file providing an abstraction of features of a network device in a computer network. The DDL file is a human readable text file. A management application monitors and controls a plurality of the network devices on the computer network. The management application includes a configfile parser package for parsing each of the DDL files during executing of the management application to provide information from each of the DDL files to the management application. The management application also includes a hotsystemsnmp package for polling each of the plurality of network devices according to polling features of the respective network devices as determined by the configfile parser package.