Patent ID: 7881199

Claim:
A method of prioritizing a traffic flow in a packet communication system destined for a receiving sub-network hosting a virtual private network (VPN) gateway, the method comprising: forwarding packets from an end user device to the receiving sub-network through a first gateway in an access network; at the first gateway in the access network, determining whether the packets from the end user device are requesting a new session with the VPN gateway; at the first gateway in the access network, non-invasively and, independently of any shared secrets between the VPN gateway and the end user device, using a deep packet inspector to infer from the packets requesting the new session whether the request was accepted by the VPN gateway by monitoring both the traffic flow passing through an egress port to the receiving sub-network and the traffic flow coming from the receiving sub-network through the egress port; and when it is inferred that the request was accepted by the VPN gateway, using a subscriber and policy management system (SPMS) to determine a new priority level to assign to the new session, wherein the new priority level is higher than a default priority level and is predetermined by the owner of the VPN gateway; using the SPMS to reconfigure network elements in the access network to permit the traffic flow to the VPN gateway at the new priority level; using the SPMS to mark the packets from the end user device in the egress port with the new priority level before sending the packets to the VPN gateway; and maintaining the traffic flow for a session between the VPN gateway and the end user device at the new priority level until the deep packet inspector determines that there is no traffic flow over the VPN gateway other than traffic flow not initiated by a user.