Techniques are disclosed for the identification of applications from communication sessions of network traffic between client devices and the generation of application-specific metrics for network traffic associated with the applications. In one example, a router obtains metrics for a plurality of packets. The router determines a session of a plurality of sessions associated with each packet. For each determined session, the router generates metrics for the session from the metrics of the packets associated with the session and determines an application of a plurality of applications associated with the session. For each determined application, the router generates metrics for the application from the metrics of the sessions associated with the application and transmits, to a device, the metrics for the application. In some examples, the router generates the metrics for each application on a per-client, per-next-hop, or per-traffic class basis.