System and method for recognizing and assigning application-specific flows

A method comprising:

• receiving a reservation request message that includes a flow spec object that specifies one or more flow parameters, the flow parameters describing a given traffic flow;
• comparing the one or more flow parameters specified in the flow spec object to one or more constants stored in a memory;
• in response to the comparing, determining a type of traffic of the given traffic flow, the determining performed independent of any differentiated services codepoint (DSCP) values in packets of the given traffic flow;
• and
• assigning the given traffic flow to a particular per hop behavior (PBB) based on the determined type of traffic for the given traffic flow.

An apparatus comprising:

• means for receiving a reservation request message that includes a flow spec object that specifies one or more flow parameters, the flow parameters describing a given traffic flow;
• means for comparing the one or more flow parameters specified in the flow spec object to one or more constants stored in a memory;
• means for determining a type of traffic of the given traffic flow in response to the comparison of the one or more flow parameters to the one or more constants, the means for determining to determine the type of traffic independent of any differentiated services codepoint (DSCP) values in packets of the given traffic flow;
• and
• means for assigning the given traffic flow to a particular per hop behavior (PHB) based on the determined type of traffic for the given traffic flow.