Patent ID: 7120121

Claim:
A method for synchronizing a distributed system, the distributed system having synchronized analyzers, and data streams, the distributed system supporting multicast communications, the method comprising: selected synchronized analyzers receiving from a control unit within the distributed system under analysis multicast information and communication packets over a network connection of the distributed system, each selected synchronized analyzer having processing resources including a synchronization decoder circuit, and one or more packet capture, analysis and generation circuits, the multicast information including synchronization information, control information, or both, and destination data corresponding to addresses of the selected synchronized analyzers; each of the synchronization decoder circuits decoding the multicast information; responsive to the multicast information, each of the synchronization decoder circuits generating local signals; each of the synchronization decoder circuits transferring the local signals to the one or more selected packet capture, analysis and generation circuits; responsive to the local signals, using each of the selected packet capture, analysis and generation circuits to simultaneously analyze at least a portion of the data streams received over the network connection for which the multicast information was received; based on the analysis of the data streams, generating analysis data; and sending the analysis data to the control unit over the network connection used to send the multicast information, the analysis data corresponding to the analysis of the data streams for the network.