Dear Stackoverflowers

I would like to develop a Network Inventory application that works on any operating system. Reports on every possible resource attacehd to a network. Reports all pertinent details of hardware and software. Thats (and i hate to use the phrase) my "End Game".

However I am running before i can crawl here. I have no experience of this type of development, e.g. discovering a computers hardware and software settings.

I've spent almost two weeks googling and come up short! :-(.

So I am turning to you to ask these questions:-

My first step is to find an existing open source project i can incorporate into my own code that extracts the fine grained details i am after, e.g. EVERYTHING there is to know about the hardaware and software on a single machine.

Does this project exist? or do i have to develop that first?

Have i got to write all this in C?

I am guessing getting this information about a computer is going to be easier than for printers, scanners, routers etc... e.g. everything else you would find attached to a network.

Once i have access to a single computers details i then need to investigate how i can traverse an entire newtork of printers, scanners, routers, load balancers, switches, firewalls, workstations, servers, storeage devices, laptops, monitors, the list goes on and on

One problem i have is i dont have a 1000 machine newtork to play on! Is there any such resource available on theinternet? (is that a silly question?)

Anywho, if you dont ask you wont find out!

One aspect iam really looking forward to finding out how to travers the entire network,

should i be using TCP/IP for this?

Whats a good site, blog, usergorup, book for TCP/IP development?

How do i go about getting through firewalls?

How many questions can i ask in one go? :-)

My previous question on this topic ended up with PYTHON being championed as the language/script to go with to develop this application in.

Having looked at a few PYTHON examples they all seemed to be related to WINDOWS networks and interrogating Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI). I had the feeling you cant rely on whats in WMI, and even if you can that s no good for UNIX netwrks.

Surely there exist common code for extracting hardware and software details from a computer? Why cant i find it on the internet?

Pease help?

Theres no prizes though :-(

Thanks in advance

I would like to appologise if i have broken forum rules or not tried hard enough on my own before asking for assistance.

I just would like to start moving forward with this as its one of the best projects i have been involved with.

I am inspired by the many differnt number of challenges involved and that if i manage to produce a useful application at the end of it it would hopefully be extremely helpful to many people.

That sit

Thanks in advance

DD