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.

Abstract: The present invention provides a method of testing a policy to detect problems and provide a mechanism for user feedback in advance of policy deployment in a policy-based network management system, so that network traffic will not be affected by errors in deployment.

Abstract: A methodology and supporting structure for logging and ordering management events in a network management system in a managed environment is presented. The network system has a central broker, which monitors the managed environment and receives events in the managed environment, and an event store, which has non-textual files organized into sets with each set containing corresponding event log and event index files. Events are logged as received by the central broker into the non-textual files organized into the sets. A complete representation of one or more events is stored in a language-independent form in an event log file of the event store so that the event information may be read and formatted for presentation in a local language. An event index file of the event log contains the location of the one or more events. The flow from multiple streams of related events may also be tracked.