Apparatus and method for a multi-level enmeshed policer

A method of operating a cascaded hierarchical network of policing elements in a communications network comprising:

• processing packet flows through said policing elements to indicate whether a packet is in conformance with given parameters of a flow;
• and
• policing packets in said network from a given policing element at one hierarchical level of said policing elements simultaneously by multiple policing elements in a single direction at a subsequent hierarchical level using at least two parallel non-overlapping paths such that hierarchies of said policing elements become enmeshed with one another and such that two policers at a same hierarchical level use different flow definitions as applied to a packet being processed, wherein each packet of a flow includes a data queue pointer and a number of control queue pointers wherein said number of control queue pointers for the packet equals the number of policing elements that police the flow or a sub-flow to which this packet belongs and
• wherein the data queue pointer includes a pointer to the location of the entire packet in memory, l(p), the size of the packet, s(p), and the conformance status of the packet c(p).

A policing apparatus for use in an enmeshed cascade of policers comprising:

• a processor for processing packet flows to indicate whether a packet is in conformance with given parameters of a flow;
• and
• at least one input and out put port for receiving and transmitting said packet flows, respectively;
• wherein a flow definition can be policed simultaneously by more than one policer in a single direction at a subsequent hierarchical level using at least two parallel non-overlapping paths and each policer polices a flow definition, and all of its subsets, at most once, wherein each packet of a flow includes a data queue pointer and a number of control queue pointers wherein said number of control queue pointers for the packet equals the number of policing elements that police the flow or a sub-flow to which this packet belongs and
• wherein the data queue pointer includes a pointer to the location of the entire packet in memory, l(p), the size of the packet, s(p), and the conformance status of the packet c(p).