Patent ID: 7742406

Claim:
An apparatus for use in a coordinated network traffic classification system, comprising a memory for buffering received first packets traversing in a first direction and second packets traversing in a second direction corresponding to data flows traversing a network path; a traffic classification engine operative to classify the data flows in a traffic class from a plurality of traffic classes; a packet processor operative to associate the received first packets and second packets buffered in the memory with corresponding data flows; conditionally add traffic classification information generated by the traffic classification engine to at least one of the first packets in a first data flow; cause a second data flow, for which at least one of the second packets includes traffic classification information, to bypass operation of one or more matching rules implemented by the traffic classification engine, wherein each of the one or more matching rules corresponds to a traffic class and comprises one or more matching attributes against which corresponding attributes of the data flows are compared; and conditionally strip traffic classification information added to the second packets by remote second network devices; and a flow control module operative to forward the first packets including the conditionally added traffic classification information to remote first network devices; and forward the second packets to destination hosts.