METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR COMMUNICATING WITH A NETWORK PERIPHERAL

Process steps to provide communication between a web browser capable of initiating execution of a platform-independent segment of executable code and a peripheral having an HTTP server and an SNMP agent. A first packet is transferred to the HTTP server, and, in response, a file is transmitted to the web browser. The file contains a reference to a platform-independent segment of executable code. Upon processing the file, this code segment is requested from the HTTP server. After the web browser receives the executable code from the HTTP server, execution of the code segment is initiated in order to create an SNMP client. Execution of the code segment also causes a packet to be sent from the SNMP client to the SNMP agent in the peripheral. In response to this packet, information concerning the peripheral is transferred from the SNMP agent to the SNMP client.