The present invention leverages a data gathering service to provide
information regarding a network system's health, performance and/or
utilization via a computing entity, local and/or remote. This provides an
optimized means to aggregate a single network's data and/or multiple
networks' data, decreasing the amount of effort required by system
administrators to keep a network operational and/or to provide control of
its utilization and/or update a system's state. In one instance of the
present invention, a data gathering service aggregates data from systems
and provides access to this information via a communication means. In
another instance of the present invention, aggregated data is utilized to
provide manual and/or automatic control of one or more aspects of a
system's utilization by an entity and/or a person. In yet another
instance of the present invention, aggregated utilization data is
employed to provide a management/productivity tool for end-users of a
networked system.