The present invention is directed to protecting media packet processors from rogue or malicious data packet flows. According to the present invention, feedback obtained from components of a media packet processor having information regarding media stream flows is used to adjust a counter or token bucket controlling the admission of such flows. More specifically, feedback is used to adjust a counter value such that the count value is decremented, or the operation of the counter in incrementing the count value according to a periodic schedule is suppressed, if a dropped packet is detected. Accordingly, the present invention may utilize the predictable quality of media stream flows, and information from components such as jitter buffers and CODECs, in order to tailor bounds on the flow of ingress traffic to a media packet processor.