Patent ID: 7710999

Claim:
A method of managing policies established for traffic flows in a network domain for enabling a service provider to selectively enforce policies for ports throughout the network domain, comprising: defining a plurality of policies type groups, including identifying each group by a policy template name from among a plurality of given policy template names, each policies type group defining a plurality of policies, each of said policies having a specified range of values for a particular type of traffic attributes associated with the policies type group and applicable to traffic flow; receiving a selection instruction selecting one of the ports; configuring a calendar view on a GUI screen, corresponding to the selected port, said calendar showing a policies scheduling for the given selected port, wherein said calendar view includes a plurality of columns, each column indicating one of the policy template names and showing, as one or more blocks of a distinctive color, each block extending over a portion of the column to represent a scheduled period of time for which at least one of the policies of the policies type groups identified by the policy template name is enforced for the selected port; maintaining a policies record of said policies groups and policies in each policies group on a policy server, with an associated timing information for each of the ports, the timing information corresponding to the policies and schedules of said policies represented by said distinctively colored blocks of said columns of the GUI screen for each of the ports; and distributing said policies from said server to network elements in said network domain that are involved in receiving and transmitting traffic flow on the ports having a corresponding configured GUI screen.