Patent ID: 6901051

Claim:
A metrics server in an intranet comprising: a network interface device configured to non-intrusively measure network traffic transferred in and out of an intranet for at least one connection, the at least one connection being a logical path from a specific source to a specific destination, the intranet being a network accessible only by authorized users; a processor coupled to the network interface device and configured to generate performance metrics for a predetermined measurement time interval using the measured network traffic for the at least one connection; wherein the at least one connection is delimited by a first packet from the specific source to the specific destination and a last packet from the specific source to the specific destination; wherein the specific source is identified by a source Internet Protocol address in the first packet and the specific destination is identified by a destination Internet Protocol address in the first packet for the at least one connection; wherein the network interface device is further configured to filter the measured network traffic such that only header information contained within the packets being transferred are captured by the network interface device; further comprising a memory coupled to the network interface device and the memory stores the measured network traffic; wherein the memory further stores an active connection table containing entries for the at least one connection that is active during the predetermined measurement time interval and an entry is deleted from memory when the at least one connection for the entry is inactive when the predetermined measurement time interval expires; and wherein the processor is further configured to update the active connection table based on the measured network traffic and the predetermined measurement time interval.