Method and system for storing and reporting network performance metrics using histograms

A method of compressing and storing data network performance information, comprising:

• determining performance metrics for a component of a data network;
• storing the performance metrics in memory;
• repeating the determining and the storing for a data collection period;
• after expiration of the data collection period, building a histogram from the stored performance metrics;
• and
• storing the histogram in the memory.

A computer program product for use with a graphics display device, comprising:

• a computer readable program code means for causing a computer to access a set of performance metric values for a network component;
• a computer readable program code means for causing a computer to generate a trace comprising graph data points based on the performance metric values;
• a computer readable program code means for causing a computer for a selected histogram range of the trace to build a histogram corresponding to the graph data points;
• and
• a computer readable program code means for causing a computer to generate for a user interface a performance monitoring display including a graph of the trace relative to an x-axis and a y-axis and a representation of the histogram;
• wherein each of the graph data points in the trace corresponds to a histogram built from the performance metric values and the trace is generated by determining and plotting an average value of each of the graph data point histograms.