A framework for the integration of legacy devices into a jini management federation

Abstract. The administration of heterogeneous networks with many devices is a tedious and time-consuming task. Today’s approaches only provide static con-figuration files and make the addition and removal of devices a manual chore. In this paper we present a framework for the integration of legacy devices based on Jini, Sun Microsystem’s new technology for federating network devices and services. We introduce extended proxy objects called nannies that take care of non-Jini-enabled devices and handle the relevant management events, guide a de-vice through bootstrapping, register it with the lookup service, and provide the implementation of the administrative interfaces of the Jini API. Through this ap-proach both Jini-enabled and legacy devices can be handled homogeneously in a Jini Management Federation.