Displaying resource performance and utilization information

• US 5,615,323 A
• Filed: 03/12/1996
• Issued: 03/25/1997
• Est. Priority Date: 11/04/1994
• Status: Expired due to Term

• Current Assignee: Computer Associates Think Inc. (Broadcom, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Concord Communications Incorporated (Broadcom, Inc.)
• Inventors: MacDonald, Wilson T., Hamlin, Arthur P., Engel, Ferdinand
• Primary Examiner(s): Nguyen, Phu K.
• Application Number:
  US08/614,192
• Time in Patent Office: 378 Days
• Field of Search: 395/140, 395/155, 395/161, 370/13, 370/17, 345/119, 345/121
• US Class Current: 345/440
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/324 Display of status information
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3409 for performance assessment
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3419 by assessing time
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3466 Performance evaluation by tracing or monitoring
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2201/81 Threshold
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2201/835 Timestamp
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2201/88 Monitoring involving counting
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/022 by sampling
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/062 related to network traffic
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/067 using time frame reporting
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/0847 Transmission error
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/0882 Utilisation of link capacity
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/0894 Packet rate
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/10 Active monitoring, e.g. heartbeat, ping or trace-route
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/106 using time related information in packets, e.g. by adding timestamps
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/16 Threshold monitoring

Abstract

A method of displaying information relating to performance of a computer resource over a preselected period of time, wherein the computer resource is connected to a communication network and the method includes the steps of: from a location on the network that is remote from the computer resource, periodically sampling data relating to performance of the resource so as to generate stored values for a preselected performance variable for that resource, wherein the periodic sampling takes place over a preselected period of time and the preselected performance variable takes on values within a specified range of possible values; dividing the specified range of possible values for the preselected performance variable into a plurality of subranges; for each subrange, determining for what proportion of the preselected period, the values of the preselected performance variable fall within that subrange; and for each subrange, displaying in graphical form the proportion of the preselected period of time that the values of the preselected performance variable fell within that subrange.

Claims

1. A method of displaying information relating to performance of a computer resource over a selected period of time, said computer resource connected to a communication network, said method comprising:

from a location on said network that is remote from said computer resource, periodically sampling over said network data relating to performance of said resource so as to generate stored values for a selected performance variable for said resource, said periodic sampling taking place over the selected period of time and wherein said selected performance variable takes on values within a range of possible values;

dividing the range of possible values for said selected performance variable into a plurality of subranges;

for each subrange, determining for what proportion of the selected period, the values of the selected performance variable fall within that subrange; and

for each subrange, displaying in graphical form the proportion of the selected period of time that the values of the selected performance variable fell within that subrange.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein the step of determining comprises:

first determining for each of said stored values of said preselected performance variable within the preselected period of time which of said plurality of subranges it falls into; and

then, counting the number of times that a stored value falls into each of said subranges to determine for what proportion of the preselected period the values of the preselected performance variable fall within that subrange.

3. A method of reporting information about a resource that is connected to a communications network, said method comprising:

from a location on said network that is remote from said computer resource, periodically sampling over said network data relating to performance of said resource so as to generate stored values for a selected performance variable for said resource;

collecting stored values representing a baseline period of time;

setting a threshold value for the selected performance variable;

analyzing the stored values representing said baseline period to predict a time-to-threshold number, said time-to-threshold number being an amount of time that is expected to elapse from a present time to a later time at which a predicted value of the selected performance variable will reach said threshold value; and

generating a report that presents the time-to-threshold number for the selected performance variable.

4. A method of displaying information relating to performance of a computer resource during a selected period of time, said computer resource connected to a communication network, said method comprising:

from a location on said network that is remote from said computer resource, collecting over said network data relating to a selected performance variable for said resource so as to generate stored values for the selected performance variable at a plurality of times during the selected period of time, wherein the stored values for said selected performance variable fall within a range of possible values;

dividing the range of possible values for said selected performance variable into a plurality of subranges;

for each subrange, determining for what proportion of the selected period, the stored values of the selected performance variable fall within that subrange; and

for each subrange, displaying in graphical form the proportion of the selected period of time that the values of the selected performance variable fell within that subrange.

5. The method of claim 4 wherein the step of collecting comprises periodically sampling accumulated data.

6. The method of claim 4 wherein the selected performance variable is utilization.

7. The method of claim 4 wherein the selected performance variable is bandwidth utilization.

8. The method of claim 4 wherein the step of displaying in graphical form comprises generating a stack bar.

9. The method of claim 8 wherein the stack bar is divided into a plurality of regions each representing a corresponding one of said subranges and for each region, the stack bar shows a proportion of the selected period of time that an average of the performance variable actually spent in the corresponding subrange.

10. The method of claim 8 wherein the selected performance variable is bandwidth utilization and wherein the stack bar is divided into a plurality of regions each representing a corresponding one of said subranges and for each region, the stack bar shows a proportion of the selected period of time that average actual bandwidth utilization spent in the corresponding subrange.

11. The method of claim 10 wherein the step of displaying further comprises setting a length of each region of the stack bar to indicate the proportion of the selected period of time that average actual bandwidth utilization spent in the range of bandwidth utilization associated with that region spent in that range by the performance variable.

12. The method of claim 8 wherein the stack bar is divided into a plurality of regions each representing a corresponding one of said subranges and wherein the step of displaying further comprises highlighting each region of the stack bar to identify the corresponding subrange for that region.

13. The method of claim 12 wherein the step of highlighting comprises coloring each region of the stack bar with a different color.

14. The method of claim 12 wherein the step of highlighting comprises shading each region of the stack bar with a different shading.

15. A method of reporting information about a resource that is connected to a communications network, said method comprising:

from a location on said network that is remote from said computer resource, gathering over said network data relating to a selected performance variable of said resource so as to generate stored values for the selected performance variable for said resource;

collecting stored values representing a baseline period of time;

setting a threshold value for the selected performance variable;

analyzing the stored values representing said baseline period to predict a time-to-threshold number, said time-to-threshold number being an amount of time that is expected to elapse from a present time to another time at which a predicted value of the selected performance variable is expected to reach said threshold value; and

generating a report that presents the time-to-threshold number for the selected performance variable.

16. The method of claim 15 wherein said another time is a positive number.

17. The method of claim 15 wherein the performance variable is a utilization statistic.

18. The method of claim 15 wherein the utilization statistic is selected from the group consisting of number of bytes transferred, broadcast utilization, bandwidth utilization, and multicast utilization.

19. The method of claim 15 wherein the performance variable is selected from the group consisting of number of collisions, number of errors, number of hard errors, and number of soft errors.

20. The method of claim 15 wherein the step of analyzing comprises using a statistical regression technique to model trends.