Patent ID: 8107366

Claim:
A system for centrally controlling packet network communications, said system comprising: an input/output (I/O) unit configured to communicate data packets over a packet network with multiple network communications devices, the packet network owned by a first communications carrier; a processing unit in communication with said I/O unit and configured to communicate with the network communications devices via respective node segments; and a memory in communication with said processing unit and configured to store a table, the table containing a plurality of operational status ranges; and said processing unit configured to receive and respectively store network performance information of node segments generated by the network communications devices in association with indicia representative of the node segments in the table, wherein the network performance information generated by the network communications devices includes information indicative of a real-time bandwidth transmission rate based on transmitting data packets determined to contain real-time content and a non-real-time bandwidth transmission rate based on transmitting data packets determined to contain non-real-time content, the network performance information further includes network performance information regarding performance of devices on a second packet network owned by a second communications carrier in which the data packets traverse; the processing unit operable to generate a value associated with an operational status for each of the node segments based on the network performance information of the node segments, and further operable to compare the value associated with the operational status for each of the node segments to the plurality of operational status ranges for determining the operation status each of the node segments, the processing unit operable to store the operation status for each of the node segments in the table as part of the network performance information of the node segments; said processing unit further configured to control network communications of data packets by the network communications devices over the node segments based on the network performance information stored in the table and on whether the data packets is identified as containing real-time content or non-real-time content.