Patent ID: 8873382

Claim:
An appliance deployed at an edge of a mobile data network that includes a plurality of basestations, each basestation communicating with a corresponding antenna that transmits and receives radio signals to and from user equipment, wherein the plurality of basestations are part of a radio access network that communicates with a core network in the mobile data network, the appliance comprising: an enclosure; hardware within the enclosure, the hardware comprising: first network connections for sending and receiving data to a downstream computer system that communicates with the user equipment; second network connections for sending and receiving data to and from an upstream computer system in the radio access network; software executing on the hardware, the software comprising: a first service mechanism that defines an existing first data path in the radio access network for non-broken out data, defines a second data path for broken out data, identifies first data corresponding to first user equipment received from a corresponding basestation as data to be broken out, sends the first data on the second data path, and forwards other data that is not broken out on the first data path, wherein the first service mechanism provides a first service with respect to internet protocol (IP) data sent to the first user equipment in response to an IP data request in the first data from the first user equipment; a plurality of overload action levels in a hierarchy comprising low impact actions, high impact actions, and shut down; and an overload manager that monitors overload conditions in the hardware and software, determines a status level for a detected overload condition, determines from the status level for the detected overload condition a corresponding overload action level in the hierarchy, and autonomically performs at least one overload action in the corresponding overload action level to address the detected overload condition.