Patent ID: 8203953

Claim:
An apparatus comprising: one or more network interfaces operative to receive and transmit frames over a communications medium; a classifier module operative to match received frames, transmitted in upstream and downstream directions, to a corresponding traffic classification of a plurality of traffic classifications and invoke a bi-directional policer associated with the corresponding traffic classification; and a plurality of bi-directional policers each associated with a particular traffic classification corresponding to upstream and downstream traffic, each of the plurality of bi-directional policers operative to measure utilization of the communications medium responsive to the received frames transmitted in the upstream and downstream directions when invoked by the classifier module, and conditionally apply a remedial action to the received frames, when the utilization of the communications medium exceeds a threshold; wherein conditionally applying the remedial action to the received frames comprises applying a first remedial action to upstream frames and applying a second remedial action to downstream frames, the first remedial action being different from the second remedial action.