Patent ID: 7272115

Claim:
A network device for enforcing service level agreements between a provider and a customer set relating to a network having network traffic composed of data packets, the network device comprising: memory for storing customer information, statistics and policies, the policies defining network attributes and services agreed to in the service level agreement; a traffic flow scanning processor connected to the memory for scanning data packets, associating the data packets with a particular customer from the customer set, and determining a treatment for the data packets based on the policies for the particular customer; and a quality of service processor connected to the traffic flow scanning processor and including a plurality of queues to process the data packets according to the treatment determined by the traffic flow scanning processor, wherein the network device checks for available bandwidth for each of the data packets by comparing available capacity for a particular type of network traffic contained within the data packets with a predetermined unit capacity associated with the particular type of network traffic, such that if the available capacity is greater than the unit capacity there is available bandwidth for the data packets.