Communications network monitoring

The disclosure relates to a method of monitoring a communications network comprising a plurality of node equipment, eg switches, and link equipment, eg fibre optic links, in which performance parameters of individual components of the node equipment are used to determine an overall performance parameter for the node equipment. By comparing like performance parameters for individual network elements, the performance of different types of network element can be compared with each other. Parameters which can be monitored include quality of service, cell discard, cell loss, and other measures of network performance. Each of a plurality of monitoring sessions runs contemporaneously, each monitoring a respective set of operational parameters. During each monitoring session, there are input a set of operational parameters (132) to be monitored. Data relating to the operational parameters is collected from one or more network elements, and a display of the data is produced (134).