Patent ID: 8145784

Claim:
A network management system comprising a policy repository and a plurality of network devices coupled to the policy repository, each network device being associated with a network element, the management of each network element being distributed to the associated network device based on network policies retrieved from the policy repository, each network device including a policy decision module that: accesses and downloads relevant policies based on the device's role from a policy repository; invokes a validation routine for validating policy rules; associates a priority indicator, a condition and an action with the validation routine for the policy rules, wherein the priority indicator indicates a priority of the policy rules; processes the policies in a policy cache upon receipt of a policy request message transmitted by a policy enforcement module, wherein processing the policies further comprises resolving conflicts between one or more policy rules based on the priority indicator; selects an applicable policy rule based on the processed policies; transmits a policy response message to the policy enforcement module including the selected policy rule and unsolicited policy response messages to the policy enforcement module; and associates with a network role, the network policies retrieved from the policy repository being based on the network role associated with the network device.