Method and apparatus for determining the health of a network

In a computer network system, a computer implemented method for indicating an overall degree of functionality of said computer network, said method comprising the steps of:

• determining a plurality of parameters relating to said computer network;
• assigning to each of said parameters a weight representing a degree of importance relative to the others of said parameters to generate a plurality of weighted parameters;
• correlating said plurality of weighted parameters to a range of conditions representing different degrees of functionality of said computer network, wherein said correlating step results in a single unitless value representing said overall degree of functionality of said computer network;
• and
• displaying an image that conveys said unitless value to said user.

In a computer network, a method of conveying an overall health of said computer network, said method comprising the steps of:

• determining status information pertaining to various operating parameters of said computer network, the status information including a plurality of subsets, each subset corresponding to one of said operating parameters;
• weighting each of said subsets of said status information according to an estimated degree of impact of each of said operating parameters on said overall health of said computer network relative to each of the others of said operating parameters;
• generating a single weighted value that conveys said overall health of said computer network based on said weighting step;
• displaying said weighted value as a graphical display ranging from a peak performance to a degraded performance of said computer network.