Patent 7937755 was granted and assigned to Juniper Networks on May, 2011 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
A correlation database stores profiling data that describes packet flows within a network. A network device stores a set of rules for permissible packet flows within the network. The network device queries the correlation database and identifies any of the packet flows within the correlation database that are exceptions to the rules. Each of the rules may specify network elements and application-layer elements to define permissible traffic characteristics for the network.