1. A method, comprising: initiating joining by a device to a computer network; during joining the computer network, sending, by the device, a configuration request to a server; responsive to joining the computer network, computing, by the device, a join time, the join time representing an amount of time by the device to join the computer network; receiving, at the device, instructions from the server whether to provide the join time to a collector, wherein the server is configured to determine whether or not the join time should be reported to a collector based at least in part on an optimal rate, the optimal rate only reporting the join time when the join time would provide additional information to a learning machine model executing on the collector, wherein the learning machine model calculates the optimal rate given a statistical model of a relationship between node properties and an estimate of a metric for the device; and sending, by the device, the join time to the collector if and only if instructions from the server are received to send the join time to the collector.