A system and method for fault isolation in a packet switching network, wherein a network element may be categorized as faulty when the network element is identified as a point-of-congestion in the network. One such system can be broadly summarized by a representative communication system that incorporates a fault isolating element to monitor multiple network elements. The fault isolating element includes components such as a database of data flow paths that exist in the plurality of network elements, a data gathering element that is configured to collect performance information related to one or more network elements, and an analyzer element that uses the performance information collected by the data gathering element to identify one or more network elements as points of congestion.