In one embodiment, a monitoring device (or module) monitors messages exchanged between nodes in a communication network. The monitoring device further determines, based on time stamp data associated with each message, one or more latency distributions of paired response times between the nodes, and determines a node topology consistent with each of the one or more latency distributions of paired response times between the nodes. In some embodiments, the monitoring device also generates a graph of the node topology showing one or more communication links between the nodes, and annotates each communication link of the one or more communication links with at least one of a mean response time or a median response time based on at least one of the latency distributions.