Applying policies to manage service flows

摘要

A method and an access domain node identify and manage a type of service offered by a service provider to user domains. A service template is prepared by the service provider, comprising an address of a server and a protocol identifier, as well as policies for controlling traffic for the service. Upon set up of a connection between a user domain and the service provider, an address of the user domain is added to the service template to produce a service flow management set. Every data packet exchanged between the user domain and the server, in either direction, is related to a service data flow for a given service type by checking for a match between a source address, a destination address, and a protocol type contained therein, with an appropriate service type. Policies from the service flow management set are used to manage the flow of data packets.