A physical token is provided that is used to assign an activity or role to a specific device by virtue of a physical relationship with the device. By associating the token with a device, through electrical connection or by mere proximity relative to the device, an administrator informs the device of the intended role for the device in an enterprise. In conjunction with some bootstrapping or other appropriate software on the computing device, the act of placing the token in the proper physical relationship with the device is all that is necessary to configure and deploy the device in a data center. A device may be assigned roles from a plurality of tokens. Computing devices may also be assigned roles based upon their proximity to other devices. Roles may also include a concept of seniority, wherein one device may be assigned a more senior role to another device.

Automated methods and systems for determining and setting router QoS adjustments to control the service level of VoIP voice communications in a packet switching network supporting both voice and data communications. Network topology and service level requirements are processed to determine QoS settings for each of the routers. The QoS settings are transmitted to the routers, for example in the form of a router configuration file, to set the QoS adjustments to achieve the desired VoIP service level. The invention is applicable to packet switching networks comprising routers or equivalent electronic switches providing electronically adjustable QoS settings.

A method, system, apparatus, and signal-bearing media for determining the name of a remotely attached device. A server discovers the devices attached to it and extracts the device names in a first protocol format. The server encodes the device names into a second protocol format. When a client requests a list of supported devices, the server sends the device names found in the second protocol format. The client decodes the names into the second protocol format back into the first protocol format and presents the device names to a host attached to the client. In this way, the host is freed from manually predetermining the device names, and the host need have no knowledge of the server or the second protocol.

A method and system for storing and automatic retrieval of data is provided. A "registry" is one way a computer system manages personal preference data such as configuration preferences and other data that users may want specific devices, applications and/or users to access. The present invention enables computer users to use a number of computer devices under essentially any circumstance and allows users and/or applications to provide individualized preference data for each situation. The registry is n-dimensional and data is stored using, for example, an identifier having three or more keys. Other features of the invention, such as wild cards and times tamps, result in a flexible robust registry system.

A system and method for wireless network communications provides a "dual-mode" wireless device that operates concurrently as a member of two disjoint wireless networks, such as an infrastructure ("IS") network and an ad hoc ("AH") network. The dual-mode device has a wireless controller driver inserted in its networking stack (e.g., the stack comprising of the Network and NDIS drivers) that exposes two virtual wireless network adapters, one for the first wireless network and one for the second wireless network. Each virtual wireless network adapter has an associated queue for queuing packets in the flow for the corresponding wireless network mode. The wireless controller driver controls the switching of the network mode. In one embodiment where the two networks include an IS network and an AH network, the mode switching is triggered by poll signals transmitted by an access point of the IS network. When the mode is switched from operating in the first network to operating in the second network, the first virtual network adapter is disabled and the second virtual network adapter is enabled, and the queued packets in the queue for the second virtual network adapter are transmitted over the second wireless network.