US Patent 10574546 Network monitoring using selective mirroring

A network element includes multiple interfaces and circuitry. The interfaces are configured to connect to a communication system. The circuitry is configured to monitor a respective buffering parameter of data flows received via an ingress interface and queued while awaiting transmission via respective egress interfaces, to identify, based on the respective buffering parameter, at least one data flow for mirroring, to select one or more packets of the identified data flow for analysis by a network manager, and to send the selected packets to the network manager over the communication system via an egress interface.