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System and method for dynamically analyzing and improving the performance of a network

  • US 5,819,033 A
  • Filed: 11/27/1996
  • Issued: 10/06/1998
  • Est. Priority Date: 06/04/1993
  • Status: Expired due to Fees
First Claim
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1. A method of operating a client-server computer system, comprising the steps of:

  • 1) establishing a saturation response time RTsat of a server computer in the computer system, the saturation response time RTsat representing a maximum acceptable time by which the server computer should respond to a service request from any of client computers in the computer system;

    2) performing the following steps once per successive plotting intervals;

    i) measuring, for each of client computers in the computer system labelled (a, b, . . . ) and a number N of successive sampling intervals labelled (1, 2, . . . , N), sets of actual response times {RTa, RTb, . . . }1, {RTa, RTb, . . . }2, . . . {RTa, RTb, . . . }N, each element of each set representing an actual response time required for the server computer to respond to a service request from the corresponding client computer during the corresponding sampling interval;

    ii) calculating the average value of the elements in each set of measured actual response times, the calculated values representing a set of average actual response times labelled {RT1, RT2, . . . , RTN };

    iii) creating a set of ordered pairs of average actual response times {(RT1, RT1), (RT2, RT1), (RT3, RT2), . . . , (RTN, RTN-1)} from the calculated average actual response times;

    iv) creating a 2-dimensional array of M2 macrostates of the computer system, wherein M is an integer whose value is chosen so that the quantity RTsat /M is an increment of response time that is meaningful to an operator of the computer system, each macrostate representing a pair of actual average response times of the server computer during two corresponding adjacent sampling intervals and having a unique pair of indices each selected from the set of response times {0, RTsat /M, 2RTsat /M, 3RTsat /M, . . . , RTsat };

    v) assigning each of the ordered pairs of average actual response times to a corresponding macrostate whose indices are both the highest among those macrostates whose indices are both less than the corresponding response times in the ordered pair;

    vi) counting the number of ordered pairs assigned to each macrostate;

    vii) calculating the proportion of ordered pairs assigned to each macrostate; and

    viii) calculating an entropy value S equal to the negative of the sum over all macrostates of the product of the proportion of ordered pairs assigned to that macrostate and the logarithm of that proportion;

    3) plotting entropy as a function of time using the entropy values S calculated during each plotting interval; and

    4) determining from the plot of entropy as a function of time whether the entropy has reached a maximum acceptable threshold value, and if so notifying the operator.

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