Importance

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Abstract

A method and apparatus for storing policies for use in policy-based management of quality of service treatments of network data traffic flows are described. The policies are stored in the form of policy statements. Each policy statement applies to a specific application that runs in the network. Each policy statement includes a condition and a network service to be applied to all traffic matching the condition. Each condition comprises one or more basic condition components connected by operators. Each basic condition comprises a basic policy parameter identifier, an operator and an operand. Policy statements are stored in a Repository, which may be a Directory Server or an X.500 directory. A policy server may create and store policies in the Repository based on information about the application, the network devices, and the quality of service treatments that the network devices can apply to a traffic flow. An application program and the policy server network device can retrieve the policy information from the Repository using appropriate function calls or an access protocol such as LDAP. In an alternative embodiment, a complete quality of service directory schema for representing abstract policies is disclosed.

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First Claim