1. A method comprising: (a) identifying, by a device configured to accelerate network traffic between a plurality of clients and one or more servers, a flow identifier to which to collect metrics, the flow identifier comprising a name of an application as an identifier; (b) identifying, by the device while accelerating network traffic, a stream of network packets corresponding to the application identified by the flow identifier from network traffic traversing the device and; (c) collecting, by the device while accelerating network traffic of the application, in a plurality of stream objects, metrics on the identified stream of network packets corresponding to the application identified by the flow identifier, wherein each stream object of the plurality of stream objects is configured to collect metrics for a specified period of time and at a specified frequency.