Managing hierarchically organized subscriber profiles

Abstract

Apparatus are provided for managing hierarchically organized subscriber profiles. According to one embodiment, a router includes multiple virtual interfaces and a policy engine. The virtual interfaces define connections between the router and corresponding subscribers of a service provider. A first virtual interface is operable to receive packets from a first subscriber and to process the packets in accordance with a first-level profile identifier. The policy engine is coupled with the virtual interfaces and operable to de-reference subscriber profiles of the subscribers on behalf of the virtual interfaces based on a database of hierarchically organized profile identifiers. The database includes multiple lower-level profile identifiers, which explicitly define subscriber services, and multiple first-level profile identifiers, which define service contexts representing combinations of services available to subscribers when connected to the service provider by (i) explicitly defining the subscriber services or (ii) referring to one or more of the lower-level profile identifiers.