A monitoring program contains a method for detecting a load imbalance in a
group of servers and providing notification so that corrections can be
made. An embodiment of the invention reads from the address resolution
protocol (ARP) cache to determine which server addresses are present,
then clears the ARP cache. The address resolution protocol will
repopulate the cache from traffic it snoops and from new requests. By
performing this query and clear operation periodically, the tracking
program can form a picture of the activity levels of the servers. When a
significant imbalance exists, the program notifies a control console for
human intervention to solve the problem. The tracking program will
periodically write its results to a log file, allowing reports for
various time periods to be produced as needed. By this mechanism, not
only can an imbalance be quickly detected, but underutilization can be
picked up by comparing known capability of a resource to its actual
usage.