Patent ID: 7574504

Claim:
A method of characterizing application performance within a network, the method comprising: determining an amount of time each frame of a flow in a thread is processed on a sending node and on a receiving node in the network; determining an amount of time each frame of the flow is in transit on the network; building a resource table, the resource table including a plurality of resource sets, each resource set comprising a resource, an initiation time that indicates the start of activity of the resource and a termination time that indicates the end of activity of the resource; deriving a resource timeline from the resource table, the resource timeline including a plurality of events, each of the events comprising: one of the resources, an event time comprising one of an initiation time and a termination time, and a sense that indicates initiation or expiration of the event; and deriving a resource matrix from the resource timeline, the resource matrix including a plurality of processing sets arranged sequentially, each processing set comprising: an instance of a resource, a time interval during which all of the instances of all of the resources comprising the processing set are active, and an allocated time for each resource within the processing set, the allocated time for each resource being equal to the time interval divided by the number of instances of said each resource within the processing set.