Methods, apparatuses, and systems directed to processing location and network data in a wireless network. According to one implementation of the present invention, a location server functions both as a middleware data collection engine and a calculation engine in a hierarchical WLAN system. In one implementation, the location server collects network data associated with mobile nodes. As described in further detail below, mobile nodes may include one or more of wireless mobile stations (e.g., wireless laptops, dual-mode phones, personal digital assistants, etc.), radio frequency identification (RFID) tags, rogue wireless access points and rogue wireless clients. In one implementation, the location server may process at least some of the network data to determine information associated with the mobile nodes. For example, the location server may compute the location of a given mobile node, which is accessible to other applications using one or more defined application programming interfaces (APIs). In one implementation, the location server may track the node history of a given mobile node. In one implementation, the location server may correlate processed network information to one or more locations or regions in the wireless network environment. For example, in one implementation, the location server may compute the load (i.e., amount of traffic) in a given region. The load may be used to further compute traffic patterns in the region. Such computations may be based on types of mobile nodes (e.g., wireless clients) and/or based on time periods (e.g., 12 pm-5 pm). As described in more detail below, such information may facilitate management of a wireless network. For example, the processed information may indicate locations that may require deployment of more resources (e.g., additional wireless access points).