1. A method, comprising: within a link based computing system, opportunistically transmitting, into a network utilized by components of said link based computing system, one or more packets that contain computing system state information, said computing system state information containing software state information created through execution of software by said computing system; and, collecting said computing system state information at a monitoring and/or debugging system attached to said link based computing system with a probe connected to one of said link based computing system's links in order to analyze said link based computing system's operation, said probe located between a transmitting agent and receiving agent of said link within said link based computing system.