Patent ID: 7277843

Claim:
A machine implemented method for assessing performance of a network, comprising: collecting data through the network, wherein the data include measurements of a metric to assess the performance of the network; determining, for a number of the measurements of the metric within a plurality of time intervals, a baseline that includes computing a moving average of the measurements of the metric weighted by the number of measurements in each time interval, wherein the moving average comprises a result of dividing a first sum, over all time intervals, of a first product of the number of measurements for each time interval multiplied by values of the measurements within each time interval multiplied by a damping factor, by a second sum, over all time intervals, of a second product of the number of measurements for each time interval multiplied by the damping factor; comparing a next metric measurement associated with a next time interval to the baseline that includes the moving average, to determine whether or not the next metric measurement should be classified as an outlier with respect to the baseline; after determining whether or not the next metric measurement should be classified as the outlier with respect to the baseline, moving to a next data point of the measurements of the metrics; and repeating the determining and the comparing for the next data point to automatically detect outliers in real time as the data is collected.