Abstract: A method for updating operational parameters of a monitoring agent on a client in a distributed data processing system is presented. The monitoring agent filters the outgoing network data traffic from the client to a server and determines whether an outgoing transaction is addressed such that an application on the server receives the outgoing transaction as a request to change the operational parameters of the monitoring agent. The outgoing transaction is parsed for a destination address and matched with a destination address stored as an operational parameter of the monitoring agent on the client. The destination address may be a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) embedded within a Hypertext Transport Protocol (HTTP) request. In response to a positive determination, the monitoring agent then sends a request to the server to send to the monitoring agent an update of the operational parameters of the monitoring agent.