Patent ID: 8059533

Claim:
A method comprising: receiving packet flow optimization (PFO) configuration data that associates each rule name of a plurality of PFO rule names with a corresponding method for processing a data packet in a communications network based on data in a payload of a layer 3 protocol of the data packet, wherein at least one PFO rule identifies an Internet protocol (IP) address of a subscriber, a quality of service (QOS) policy associated with the subscriber, and a billing policy associated with the subscriber, and wherein the PFO rule includes a field identifying how packets for the subscriber are to be forwarded in the communications network; receiving, from a policy management process in the communications network, a first policy message that includes rule data that indicates a signaled rule name of the plurality of PFO rule names associated with a particular network address in the communications network; and in response to receiving the first policy message, processing a data packet of the particular network address according to a particular method associated with a particular rule name that is selected based on the signaled rule name, wherein the first policy message includes data formatted according to a Ty interface Specification and includes a PFO rule-name attribute-value pair (AVP), which comprises data indicative of the signaled rule name.