Patent attributes
A method and apparatus for securely managing managed appliances such as keyboard/video/mouse (KVM) switches using a network communication protocol is described. A client workstation initiates a management session by establishing a secure sockets layer connection with the appliance over a predefined TCP port number. This secure management protocol is used to manage appliances that support SNMP by tunneling SNMP protocol requests through the presently-described protocol. The protocol includes a login sequence to enhance the security of data transmitted according to the protocol. The workstation can read and set object identifiers in the managed appliance. The workstation can also read and write files to and from the managed appliance. In addition, a single managed appliance can have multiple management sessions open at one time.
