collectd is a Unix daemon that collects, transfers and stores performance data of computers and network equipment.

The acquired data is meant to help system administrators maintain an overview over available resources to detect existing or looming bottlenecks.

[3] collectd uses a modular design: The daemon itself only implements infrastructure for filtering and relaying data as well as auxiliary functions and requires very few resources, it even runs on OpenWrt-powered embedded devices.

Included in the source code distribution of collectd is the so-called "network" plug-in, which can be used to send and receive data to/from other instances of the daemon.

On one or more so called "servers" the same daemon would run but with a different configuration, so that the network plug-in receives data instead of sending it.