"Matt Duggan" <mattski27@[...].com>  writes:

>  Hi,
>  
>  I am new to the list and have recently acquired an interest in
>  A.I. with Perl.  I would like, as an initial dip into the water so to
>  speak, to know what your thoughts on solving the following problem
>  are? (how would you solve and and using what?)
>  
>  Basically, I am interested in monitoring the throughput of an
>  interface on my computer via MRTG / RRDtool (or _maybe_ even 'raw'
>  data in a MySQL/Oracle db) and would like to be able to do the
>  following:-
>  
>  1. Assume that my usage curve is a curve of some type, with the X-axis
>  of a particular graph being time and the Y axis is interface
>  throughput. I want the system to be able to 'learn' my usage pattern
>  and determine what 'normal' is for a given hour, day, week, month.
>  
>  2. I want to be able to be alerted when usage strays away from 'normal'.
>  
>  What are your thoughts on how to achieve this?  Would a neural network
>  with some appropriate training data be able to recognise a normal
>  pattern and, more importantly, any deviations from that pattern?

This is probably a non AI problem. Before you investigate AI I
would like to advise you to try to solve this problem with maths
or lets say just the usuall  statistics. IMHO, the chance that 
"learning" as defined in a AI context won't be neccessary is pretty 
high.

HTH,

Andreas