Patent ID: 7299277

Claim:
A probe apparatus for application monitoring comprising: (a) a data collection module for collecting data from a network segment; (b) a flow processor coupled to the data collection module for classifying the collected data into a plurality of flows; (c) a capture system coupled to the flow processor for filtering and buffering the collected data based on the collected data and the flow corresponding to the collected data, the capture system comprising a plurality of buffers allocated to the collected data, the capture system reallocating buffers if a number of priority flows changes; and (d) a main processor for processing the filtered data based on the collected data and the flow corresponding to the filtered data; wherein the data collection module prepends the data with descriptor information, wherein the descriptor information is used by the capture system to filter the collected data; wherein the capture system includes a capture buffer and a focus buffer, wherein the capture system filters the collected data stored in the capture buffer, wherein the filtered data is sent to the focus buffer; wherein the capture system captures the collected data in the capture buffer in at least one of a fill and stop mode, a wrap mode, a priority queuing mode and a non-priority queuing mode; wherein in priority queuing mode the capture buffer is segmented into priority and non-priority queues, wherein the buffer space for each queue varies dynamically based on the arrival of data that meets priority criteria; and wherein buffers are reallocated to the priority queue from the non-priority queue as the number of priority flows increases.