Patent ID: 7706278

Claim:
An apparatus, comprising: processing circuitry; and a memory coupled to the processing circuitry comprising instructions executable by the processing circuitry, the processing circuitry operable when executing the instructions to: decrement lifetime values of incoming packets before performing a forwarding function; filter the packets according to whether they are expired or not by analyzing the decremented lifetime values; examine only the filtered packets having the exceeded lifetime for a monitoring request, wherein the processing circuitry does not conduct the monitoring request examination for the non-expired packets; if the monitoring request is located in an expired one the packets according to the examination, extract a call flow identifier from the monitoring request; compare the extracted call flow identifier to received call flows to identify any call flows corresponding to the extracted call flow identifier; and conduct an ongoing monitoring of any identified call flows, said ongoing call flow monitoring performed according to any monitoring parameters included in the monitoring request and, said ongoing call flow monitoring including at least one selected from the group including counting packets in the call flow and measuring inter-arrival jitter of the call flow packets.