Techniques are disclosed for centralized control of one or more attributes associated with a communication session in a network containing firewalls. By way of example, a technique for controlling an attribute associated with a communication session in a data communication network includes the following steps. The attribute associated with the communication session is monitored at a first computing device, wherein the first computing device includes a functionally centralized controller. The first computing device determines which computing devices in the data communication network are to be made aware of the monitored attribute. At least one of the computing devices to be made aware of the monitored attribute includes a firewall. The first computing device sends a message to each computing device identified in the determining step.