TECHNIQUE FOR MONITORING HEALTH OF NETWORK DEVICE USING DATA FORMAT VERIFICATION

A technique is disclosed for determining a health status of a selected network device in a data network. A resource request is transmitted to the selected network device. Data including content information is then received from the network device in response to the resource request. At least a portion of the content information is verified by verifying at least one format of a selected portion of content information using format verification rules. The health status of the network device may then be determined based upon the results of the format verification.