Patent ID: 8566527

Claim:
A usage analysis apparatus, comprising: a cache; and a processor engine coupled to the cache, and responsive to an input of a usage record associated with a subscriber in a communications network, the processing engine including a cache query module, a database update module and a policy evaluation module, wherein the policy evaluation module is configured to output one or more threshold crossing records based on the subscriber exceeding a permitted usage, wherein the database update module is configured to update a database, and wherein the cache query module retrieves a data item from the cache if the cache query module determines that the cache contains the data item for analysis of the usage record, otherwise the cache query module retrieves the data item from the database and populates the cache with the data item; wherein the cache query module further deletes the data item in the cache in response to an input of an expiry input; wherein the expiry input is generated based on an age of the data item in the cache; wherein the generation of the expiry input can be jittered in a range centered on a nominal age.