Patent ID: 8204985

Claim:
A method of monitoring a network, comprising: at each node of a set, constructing a corresponding vector of M components based on a stream of data packets received at the node during a time period, the set including a plurality of nodes of the network, M being greater than 1; and estimating a value of a byte traffic produced by a part of the packets based on the constructed vectors, the part being the packets received by every node of the set; wherein: the constructing includes updating a component of the vector corresponding to one of the nodes in response to the one of the nodes receiving a data packet, the updating includes selecting a component of the vector to be updated by hashing a property of the received data packet, and the hashing includes (i) mapping the property of the received data packet to a first element of a first hash function having a set of first elements and (ii) mapping the property of the received data packet to a second element of a second hash function having a set of second elements, wherein the property of the received data packet is a hash key used for both the first hash function and the second hash function.