Hosted searching of private local area network information with support for add-on application

摘要

Hosted searching of private LAN information is described. The apparatus includes a LAN crawler to automatically and repeatedly crawl a LAN having multiple devices, using a discovery module to discover the devices, a generic-probing module to attempt to collect the descriptive information according to a first set of probing requirements, and multiple specific-probing plug-ins each of which attempt to collect the descriptive information according to a second set of specific probing requirements. In another embodiment, the apparatus also includes a hosted on-demand search system including a centralized-search server to create and synchronize a private search database. The centralized-search server includes an application interface to receive a request to access the private search database from a third-party add-on application, to provide the accessed information to the third-party add-on application, and to receive from the third-party add-on application an application rendered component to be displayed on the user interface.