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. In representative embodiments, users are
able to see how individual targets are responding to the policy deployed
to them, as well as recognize when the aggregate set of operations has
completed. In a similar manner, policy can be aggregated for undeployment
and the subsequent undeployment tracked on a computer.