A system, method, and computer program product for distributed monitoring of local thresholds at each of a number of monitoring nodes and initiating communication only after the locally observed data exceeds the local threshold. Both static thresholds and adaptive thresholds are considered. In the static case, a combination of two alternate strategies for considering thresholds minimizes communication overhead. In the adaptive case, local thresholds are adjusted based on the observed distributions of updated information in the distributed monitoring system. Both approaches yield significant savings over the naive approach of performing processing at a centralized location.