Aggregated policy deployment and status propagation in network management systems

Abstract

A method for deployment of policy to a target connected to a network for the purpose of controlling the actions of that target based upon certain predefined conditions. The policy contains one or more policy rules with each rule defining conditions that when evaluated true trigger actions to allow or deny quality of service related resources (e.g., bandwidth or priority). Techniques are disclosed which provide for policy implementation in an aggregation rather than one at a time. The number of steps that a user must perform to implement policy in the network is reduced, the user can group a related set of policies, and all of the targets destined to receive policy changes can do so at approximately the same time, so device configuration changes can be coordinated. Having initiated an aggregated policy change, the user can track the status of the aggregate operation as well as the individual status changes which comprise the aggregate operation. In representative embodiments, users are able to see how individual targets are responding to the policy deployed to them, as well as recognize when the aggregate set of operations has completed. In a similar manner, policy can be aggregated for undeployment and the subsequent undeployment tracked on a computer.