Patent ID: 7069177

Claim:
A system for analyzing the performance of a network comprising: at least one data collection agent (DCA) located on a network and which collects performance data including at least a first set of measurements of a single network parameter and at least a second set of measurements including at least a single measurement of the single network parameter, each measurement of the at least a first set of measurements taken at a different time; a processing module interconnected with the at least one DCA and which calculates at least (a) a first variance statistic and (b) a second variance statistic, the first variance statistic being a variance statistic of the at least a first set of measurements and the second variance statistic being a variance statistic of the at least a second set of measurements; and a comparison module interconnected with the processing module and which compares the first variance statistic with at least the second variance statistic to determine if a predetermined relationship exists between the first variance statistic and the second variance statistic, wherein the processing module is further programmed to alert a user about a potential network performance problem based, at least in part, on whether the predetermined relationship is determined to exist between the first and second variance statistics.