The present invention relates to a method and apparatus for monitoring a status of nodes of a communication network. The method determines first node status data at a first node by diagnosing the own status of the first node and the status of at least one second node, sends the first node status data to at least one second node, receives second node status data from at least one second node, and determines node status evaluation data at the first node based on the determined first node status data and the received second node status data. Furthermore, improvements are proposed for the sake of efficiency and/or robustness of the method.