Patent ID: 7359974

Claim:
A system for dynamically controlling aggregate and individual packet flow characteristics within a compressed logical, network layer data tunnel, comprising: a traffic manager operative to form a logical, network layer data tunnel with a remote tunnel partner, to transmit one or more packet flows via the logical, network layer data tunnel, each packet flow comprising individual packets having a destination address, by modifying the individual packets in the packet flows to identify the remote tunnel partner as the destination address, further comprising: a classifier module operative to classify packet flows to determine respective service types, wherein each service type maps to an aggregate bandwidth flow allocation, and further maps to a compression index value; a compression module operative to compress individual packets of the one or more packet flows, and to apply a compression algorithm to individual packets based on the compression index value associated with the individual packets; a transmit module operative to schedule packets for transmission based on the aggregate bandwidth flow allocations of respective packet flows; and transmit individual packets compressed by the compression module over the logical, network layer data tunnel; and an evaluation module operative to adjust the aggregate bandwidth flow allocations for the respective service types based on the compressed sizes and original sizes of the individual packets.