A method for operating a network includes receiving, by a statistics engine of a network device, a channel identifier in connection with a statistic of an input frame. The channel identifier identifies a channel of a virtual network structure, and the input frame is received by the network device via the channel of the virtual network structure. The method further includes traversing, by a statistics engine and in response to the receiving the channel identifier in connection with the statistic, a hierarchical data structure based on the channel identifier. The hierarchical data structure comprises hierarchical statistic attributes of the virtual network structure. The method further includes selecting, by the statistics engine based on the traversing and from the hierarchical statistic attributes, linked statistic attributes that are linked to the channel identifier in the hierarchical data structure, incrementing, by the statistics engine based on the statistic, an existing value of each of the linked statistic attributes to generate an incremented value, and presenting, subsequent to the incrementing the existing value, the hierarchical statistic attributes.