Patent ID: 7769875

Claim:
A method comprising: intercepting a signaling communication between a customer device and an application server with an intermediate network device, wherein the signaling communication is used to establish delivery of a network service provided by the application server, wherein the signaling communication conforms to a signaling protocol and is separate from a network flow that subsequently delivers the requested network service from the application server to the customer device, and wherein the signaling communication includes network flow information identifying dynamically-assigned port numbers for the network flow to deliver the service from the application server to the customer device; establishing within the intermediate device, based on the intercepted signaling communication, application classification information for uniquely identifying network packets of the network flow, wherein the application classification information includes the dynamically-assigned port numbers specified in the intercepted signaling communication; after generating the application classification information from the network flow information of the intercepted signaling communication, applying the application classification information with the intermediate device to network packets received by the intermediate device to identify network packets of the network flow that deliver the network service from the application server to the customer device; selecting, in response to identifying the network packets of the network flow, a policy associated with the customer device; and applying the policy to the identified network packets of the network flow with the intermediate network device to individually control the network flow associated with the network service.