Patent ID: 8295198

Claim:
A system for dynamically controlling network communications, the system comprising: a network device configured to receive network traffic and to produce a plurality of flow records describing said network traffic; a flow record storage configured to receive said flow records from said network device and to store said flow records; and a data analysis tool configured to access the flow record storage to retrieve said stored flow records and to assess each of said flow records according to predefined criteria to dynamically identify an address, wherein the data analysis tool is further configured to implement statistical models configured to solve network usage related problems, and wherein the data analysis tool uses the flow records and statistical models to generate a statistical result that is then stored in the flow record storage; wherein each of said plurality of flow records comprises a sequence number identifying the flow record, a source node address, a destination node address, a source port address, a destination port address, and number of bytes or packets transmitted in each associated flow, and wherein the predefined criteria comprises the total number of bytes transmitted in the associated flow for each of the node or port addresses, wherein the network device is configured to receive said identified address and to add said identified address to an access control list to prevent forwarding traffic associated with said identified address; and an input/output device configured to display to a user said identified address received from the data analysis tool, and wherein the data analysis tool is configured to forward the identified address to the network device to be added to the access control list only if the user provides an input to accept the identified address.