Patent ID: 7529979

Claim:
A method of analyzing events occurring on a distributed network comprising a plurality of processors, the method comprising: during offline processing: updating a recent history table with critical events and any associated non-critical events that may occur in the distributed network; computing conditional probability values into a probability table, said probability values comprising joint probability values reflecting a probability that a sequence of two or more non-critical events happen before the critical event occurs; periodically updating the probability table; periodically examining the probability table to determine when online analysis of the non-critical event is possible; and generating event masks for use in a masking mechanism to filter a subset of the non-critical events associated with the critical events so that online analysis can be carried out in real-time; during online processing: loading the conditional probability table and the event masks computed from offline analysis; dynamically filtering the non-critical events using the masking mechanism comprising timeout and probability thresholds; determining that the probability of the occurrence of the critical event has surpassed a threshold level using the conditional probability table; migrating a process away from the critical event if it is determined that a timeout period has not elapsed; and if it is determined that the timeout period has elapsed: reloading the conditional probability tables; and generating new event masks to filter another subset of the non-critical events.