EFFICIENT NETWORK TRAFFIC ANALYSIS USING A HIERARCHICAL KEY COMBINATION DATA STRUCTURE

A network access device for network traffic analysis of a plurality of client devices in a local area network (LAN) maintains a hierarchical key combination traffic analysis (HKCTA) table for each of the client devices of the LAN (LAN devices) to store network traffic statistics of each LAN device, wherein the HKCTA includes entries identified by keys, each key being formed based on a combination of zero or more packet attributes of packets or flow attributes of a network flow associated with the packets (packet/flow attributes) exchanged by the LAN device. Each key represents one of hierarchical levels of a hierarchy of the entries. Each level of the hierarchy includes all packet/flow attributes of its parent hierarchical level plus at least one additional packet/flow attribute that is not present in its parent hierarchical level.