Patent ID: 8902754

Claim:
A method for load balancing a large volume of network traffic into manageable segments, the method comprising the steps of: receiving a first and a second transaction between a Mobile Management Entity (MME) and a Serving Gateway (S-GW) over an S11 interface of a Long Term Evolution/Service Architecture Evolution (LTE/SAE) network using a control portion of a second version of a GPRS Tunneling Protocol (GTPv2-C); storing, in a memory, a first uplink user plane (UP) Tunnel Endpoint Identifier (TEId) and Internet Protocol (IP) address, a first downlink control plane (CP) TEId and IP address, and a first uplink CP TEId and IP address obtained from the first transaction, and a first downlink UP TEId and IP address obtained from the second transaction; creating a plurality of session segments based on: the first uplink UP TEId and the IP address; the first downlink CP TEId and the IP address; the first uplink CP TEId and the IP address; and the first downlink UP TEId and the IP address stored in the memory; identifying subsequent messages exchanged between an eNodeB and the S-GW over a direct tunnel using a user portion of a first version of the GTP protocol (GTPv1-U) as belonging to one of the plurality of session segments using at least one of: (i) the first uplink UP TEId and IP address; and (ii) the first downlink UP TEId and IP address to populate the session segments; and determining how to selectively analyze a subset of the network traffic based on the session segments and using a plurality of heuristics.