Patent ID: 8671181

Claim:
A method performed by data processing apparatus, the method comprising: identifying a host table of a first sensor, the host table of the first sensor including, for each of a plurality of host devices monitored by the first sensor on a network, a record describing host device attributes including: an IP address assigned to the respective host device; an agent identifier of an agent installed on the respective host device; a media access control (MAC) address of the respective host device; an information probe type of an information probe used by the first sensor to collect data from the respective host device; and a time stamp indicating when the respective host attributes were stored in the record; receiving from a peer sensor of the first sensor in connection with a synchronization event, a peer record for a first host device, the peer record comprising data describing attributes of the first host device stored in a host table of the peer sensor, wherein the synchronization event is triggered by recovery of at least one of the first sensor and peer sensor from an offline condition; and comparing host device attributes of a particular record in the host table with host device information of the peer record, wherein the comparing includes: determining that a MAC address of a particular record stored in the host table matches a MAC address of the peer record; determining that the information probe type of the particular record is different from an information probe type of the peer record; determining that the peer record is more recent than the particular record of the host table based on a comparison of a time stamp of the peer record with the time stamp of the particular record in the host table; and updating the information probe type stored in the particular record with the information probe type of the peer record, wherein the updating causes the first sensor to use an information probe of the information probe type of the peer record in subsequent probes of the first host device.