Patent ID: 7406040

Claim:
A method comprising: based upon a tabulation at a second router, determining that a time-based traffic measure exceeds a predetermined threshold, said tabulation comprising a plurality of source counts of IP data packets, each source count of IP data packets of said plurality of source counts of IP data packets indicative of a count of packets received from a particular IP source during a predetermined time interval, said plurality of source counts of IP data packets associated with every source that provides IP data packets to said second router; and sending a message to a first router, said message adapted to instruct said first router to discard packets associated with said time-based traffic measure, wherein said first router is not a source router for said packets, said first router directly interconnected by a first plurality of data paths to a first sub-plurality of interconnected routers from a plurality of interconnected routers, said message transmitted from said second router responsive to said determination that said time-based traffic measure exceeds said predetermined threshold.