Patent ID: 7423971

Claim:
A method of establishing a network resources reservation for an anticipated traffic flow along a path in a network between an anticipated source and an anticipated receiver of the traffic flow, wherein the anticipated receiver otherwise cannot facilitate establishing the network resources reservation, the method comprising the steps of: storing, at a proxy node, policy information defining whether the proxy node should initiate network resources reservations for particular traffic flows; detecting a first RSVP Path message associated with the anticipated receiver of the anticipated traffic flow at a router, acting as a proxy node, located within the path; determining, at the proxy node and based on the policy information stored at the proxy node and without receiving the policy information from a policy server residing on the network, whether to establish the network resources reservation; generating, at the proxy node, an RESV message to reserve network resources for the anticipated traffic flow; communicating the RESV message to the anticipated source of the anticipated traffic flow; wherein the step of determining, at the proxy node, whether to establish the network resources reservation includes the steps of: determining one or more network parameter values associated with the anticipated traffic flow; determining one or more transport parameter values associated with the anticipated traffic flow; determining next and previous hop parameter values associated with the anticipated traffic flow; correlating at least one of the ascertained network parameter, transport parameter, next hop parameter, and previous hop parameter values with information defining a relationship between them and whether a RESV message is desired; and concurrently with the generating and communicating steps, forwarding a second RSVP Path message to one or more devices that are along the anticipated path and that are between the proxy node and the anticipated receiver, wherein the second RSVP Path message defines a different set of traffic characteristics for the flow initiated by the sender than the first RSVP message.