Excluding specific application traffic from customer consumption data

A computer-implemented method for managing billing of consumption-based data billing plans, the computer-implemented method comprising:

• receiving, at a billing system, a usage record indicating data usage corresponding to a customer device, the usage record logged by a content distribution device that provides Internet service to the customer device by forwarding data packets via logical data service flows, the usage record identifying a first amount of data traffic using a first logical data service flow identifier, the usage record identifying a second amount of data traffic using a second logical data service flow identifier, the content distribution device using the second logical data service flow identifier when forwarding a stream of data packets destined for the customer device and having a source address that matches an address from a predetermined set of addresses, the predetermined set of addresses corresponding to devices that serve television content, the billing system managing billing corresponding to the customer device having a consumption-based data billing plan;
• including data counts from the first logical data service flow identifier when calculating data usage for the consumption-based data billing plan;
• and
• excluding data counts from the second logical data service flow identifier when calculating data usage for the consumption-based data billing plan.

A computer system for managing billing of consumption-based data billing plans, the computer system comprising:

• a processor;
• and
• a memory coupled to the processor, the memory storing instructions that, when executed by the processor, cause the system to perform the operations of:
• receiving, at a content distribution device that delivers content to multiple customer premises, data packets having a destination address of a customer device, the content distribution device being configured to forward the data packets to the customer device via a first logical data service flow identifier of a plurality of logical data service flow identifiers;
• examining packet headers of the data packets received at the content distribution device;
• in response to identifying a stream of data packets having predetermined information in the packet header, forwarding the stream of data packets to the customer device via a second logical data service flow identifier instead of the first logical data service flow identifier, the predetermined information identifying packets that are excluded from a consumption-based data billing plan;
• and
• transmitting a usage record to a billing system that processes billing for the customer device, the usage record indicating a data consumption count for at least one of the plurality of logical data service flow identifiers.