Patent ID: 7496036

Claim:
A method for determining a client-perceived server response time for a transaction over a computing network, said method comprising: capturing a copy of a first packet traversing the computing network between a client and a server, wherein said first packet is an initial transmission control protocol (TCP) connection request packet sent from said client to said server to request a TCP connection therebetween, and wherein said capturing step comprises: analyzing data contained within said first packet to infer an existence of one or more dropped initial TCP connection request packets sent prior to said first packet, wherein said data is contained within a flow object, the flow object being a data structure having a plurality of fields that represent a TCP connection between said client and said server, said flow object being associated with said first packet, a first field of said plurality of fields indicating a number of initial TCP connection request packets which are captured or whose existence is inferred prior to capturing said first packet; modifying a server-measured transaction start time to account for a first retransmission wait time associated with said first packet and for at least one second retransmission wait time associated with at least one earlier packet captured earlier in time relative to said first packet, wherein at least one of said first packet and said at least one earlier packet is dropped in said computing network or is dropped by said server; and determining a server-measured server response time in accordance with said server-measured transaction start time, as modified, so that said server-measured server response time is indicative of said client-perceived server response time.