US Patent 7330886 Network appliance management

A system for displaying data associated with network appliances includes icons arranged in a display area in accordance with a characteristic associated with the network appliances. This characteristic may be related to location, alarm state, sensor value, or others. Further, the icons may display visual indication associated with network appliance parameters. Moreover, the icons may be superimposed on a graphical element. This element may be a map, blueprint, image, or plot. Further, a set of historical data may be replayed through the display by altering the visual indications of the icons and the graphical element in accordance with a sequence of values contained in the historical data.