Patent ID: 8607304

Claim:
A communication network comprising: an access gateway for receiving user equipment traffic and to control user equipment access to the communication network; a policy enforcement engine associated with the access gateway for enforcing a policy rule for the user equipment traffic; a policy server that serves as a centralized repository of policies, wherein the policy server is communicatively coupled to the policy enforcement engine; and a service gateway having a first gateway function and a local policy engine, wherein the service gateway and the access gateway are different gateways and the policy enforcement engine and the local policy engine are different engines, wherein the first gateway function is communicatively coupled to the access gateway and for providing a selected service to a user equipment when the user equipment traffic includes a request for the selected service associated with the first gateway function and the local policy engine associated with the first gateway function enforces a policy rule associated with the selected service when the policy rule is stored in the local policy engine, wherein the service gateway is for permitting user equipment access to the first gateway function based on an enforcement of the policy rule associated with the selected service and enforced by the local policy engine, wherein the policy rule is received from the policy server if the policy rule is not stored in the local policy engine, and the policy rule is stored in the local policy engine if the policy rule has been requested before, wherein a plurality of policy rules is stored in the local policy engine that is related to services provided by the service gateway and does not contain extraneous policies that are unrelated to the services provided by the service gateway, wherein the service gateway has two logical links to the policy server, a first one of the two logical links for providing a charging policy to the service gateway and a second one of the two logical links for sending policy information to and from the policy server to the local policy engine.