Abstract: Round trip time, bottleneck link speed, and hop count information from one node to the remaining nodes within a network is collected and processed by an adaptive resonance theory (ART) neural network to classify the nodes by physical location or site group. For each site group, round trip time from one node to the remaining nodes is then collected and processed utilizing an ART neural network to classify the nodes into one or more physical groups. The resulting breakdown of site groups within the network and physical groups within the site groups forms a model which may be employed by networking and system management applications. No private or proprietary vendor specific information from communications devices within the network need be employed to develop the model, only publicly available information regarding communications parameters.