Patent ID: 8429255

Claim:
A network management device comprising: a network interface that receives and sends network packets; a command generation module that executes on a processor to generate one or more policy configuration commands for a managed network device, wherein the policy configuration commands direct the managed device to conform a currently configured policy for the managed device to an updated policy for the managed device, wherein the currently configured policy comprises a plurality of policy rules in a first ordering and the updated policy comprises the plurality of policy rules in a second ordering, wherein the command generation module comprises a longest common subsequence module that determines a longest common subsequence of a source list comprising the plurality of policy rules in the first ordering and of a destination list comprising the plurality of policy rules in the second ordering, wherein the longest common subsequence is a longest subset of the plurality of policy rules that have a same ordering in both the source list and the destination list, wherein the longest common subsequence module generates, for each policy rule of the plurality of policy rules that is not included in the longest common subsequence, a policy configuration command that, when executed by the managed network device, moves the policy rule relative to one of the plurality of policy rules that is included in the longest common subsequence; an element manager that sends the policy configuration command generated for each policy rule of the plurality of policy rules that is not included in the longest common subsequence to the managed network device via the network interface.