Patent ID: 8203954

Claim:
A method for dynamically applying a link utilization based policy to traffic traversing a plurality of links in a computer network, the method comprising: assigning a link utilization threshold to a first link of the plurality of links, the link utilization threshold embodied as a particular difference between a measure of link utilization of the first link and a measure of link utilization of one or more second links of the plurality of links; monitoring, by a processor, the link utilization of the first link and the one or more second links; monitoring, by the processor, bandwidth utilization of a plurality of prefixes reached over the first link; considering the first link to be out-of-policy (OOP) in the event that a difference between the measure of link utilization of the first link and the measure of link utilization of one or more second links surpasses the link utilization threshold; and in response to the link utilization threshold being surpassed, determining one or more selected prefixes, from the plurality of prefixes, whose collective bandwidth utilization is greater than an amount the link utilization threshold is surpassed, and changing a route for the one or more selected prefixes to redirect traffic from a first network interface operably connected to the first link to one or more second network interface operably connected to other available links in order to reduce the link utilization of the first link to cause the difference between the measure of link utilization of the first link and the measure of link utilization of the one or more second links to be equal to or below the link utilization threshold.