A system for and method of analyzing the performance of a packet-switched
network, the network automatically generating a traffic log each time a
packet enters or exits the network and each traffic log including at
least the time the traffic log was created, the addresses of the packet
sender and packet recipient, and the entry and exit network nodes. A
server collects a plurality of traffic logs, parses the available
information therein and generates a plurality of histograms, each
histogram being based on information gleaned from the plurality of
traffic logs. The histograms may be representative of packet traffic
passing through a host connected to the network, packet traffic passing
through a node in the network or the amount of data that travels over a
link between two nodes of the network. To increase the delivery speed of
the histogram data from the server to a client, the histograms are
preferably stored as flat files to achieve direct and rapid access to
stored data.