Patent ID: 8675500

Claim:
A method comprising: receiving, at one or more processors and for each of multiple network devices distributed throughout a geographic region, at least one measured performance characteristic value corresponding to that network device; identifying, by the one or more processors, a first of the multiple network devices and a subset of the multiple network devices, the subset of the multiple network devices comprising one or more of the multiple network devices that are within a calculated geographic range of the first network device, wherein identifying the first of the multiple network devices and the subset of the multiple network devices comprises determining a non-zero distance from the first network device to a nearest neighbor network device and identifying others of the multiple network devices located within a range from the first network device calculated from the determined non-zero distance; and classifying, by the one or more processors, the identified network devices as a problem device grouping based on collective evaluation of the received values corresponding to the identified network devices, wherein classifying the identified network devices comprises assigning a grade for each of the received values corresponding to the identified network devices, averaging the assigned grades, and determining that the average meets a predetermined threshold.