A method at a computing device for determining processing characteristics of nodes within a system, the method including receiving at the computing device a plurality of messages being passed within the system; analyzing a payload for each message of the plurality of messages to determine one or more message identifiers; performing an analysis of a binary image for each node within the system to find nodes filtering for the one or more message identifiers; and determining a relative amount of processing done by each of the nodes based on the plurality of messages.