Patent ID: 7606147

Claim:
A method comprising: enforcing a per subscriber, per application traffic policy on network traffic flowing through a network device between a set of one or more subscribers communicatively coupled through an access network and a set of one or more services communicatively coupled through a core network by: classifying the network traffic at the network device located between the access network and the core network into application level subscriber flows, the classifying including identifying a particular subscriber associated with a given packet, identifying a particular application associated with the given packet, and identifying a control protocol if the given packet contains control protocol data for the particular application; generating real-time statistics at the network device on the application level subscriber flows and overall network element congestion, wherein the real-time statistics are generated at least in part based on deep packet inspection of the network traffic; updating, in real-time, at the network device, the per subscriber, per application traffic policy based on the real-time statistics and the classifying, wherein the updating is triggered by the real-time statistics and by identified control protocols; and restricting bandwidth for the application level subscriber flows at the network device to enforce the updated per subscriber, per application traffic policy.