Abstract

Methods and associated systems for dynamically measuring the capacity of a host system to gather network management data by a network management system application. The methods of the present invention are operable as part of a network management system on host systems of the network management applications. An NMS application is provided a list of other nodes on the network with which it will likely exchange data to perform desired network management functions. The NMS application then directs a steady stream of data units to the identified nodes which, in turn, echo the received data units back to the originating host system. The data units are sequentially identified with, at least, a sequence number. The NMS application then examines the data unit received back from the nodes. If no packets are missing as indicated by the sequence numbers, then the frequency of data unit generation and transmission is increased to identify a saturation point at which returned data units are lost by the NMS application's host system. Reaching this saturation point is indicative of over subscription of at least one computing resource required by the network management application on the host computer. This dynamically measured value is then used to optimize the performance of the NMS application by governing its exchange of other data units for purposes of network management.