Patent ID: 7349960

Claim:
A method of managing distributed statistical data retrieval in a network device, comprising: a. gathering statistical data on at least one card within the network device periodically, wherein, upon each start, upgrade, or reboot, a device driver on the at least one card informs a usage data monitoring library on the at least one card which statistical data the device driver is able to gather; b. sending a predetermined number of packets from the card to a central process, wherein one of the predetermined number of packets is a registration packet comprising one or more string names corresponding to the types of statistical data that the usage data monitoring library will send to the central process, wherein each packet includes at least a portion of the statistical data, and wherein the predetermined number of packets is determined via a negotiation between the card and the central process upon a registration of the card with the central process; c. sending an acknowledge request to the central process in conjunction with sending the last packet in the predetermined number; and d. controlling the number of packets sent from the card to the central process, including: sending an acknowledge packet from the central process to the card indicating a time that the card can resume sending packets to the central process, said time being based on an estimate of a time interval needed by the central process to process a sufficient number of the received packets to reduce the number of packets awaiting processing below a predetermined threshold, wherein the controlling the number of packets sent from the card to the central process load balances the statistical data across a control plane, smoothes out control plane bandwidth utilization, and reduces data buffering and data loss, repeating steps b, c and d when the acknowledge packet is received at the card and the time indicated has elapsed.