Patent ID: 9391915
Filing Date: 2016-07-12
CPC Classification: H04L

Claim Text:
1. A computer-implemented method for controlling bandwidth usage for network connection services available to one or more subscribers of a subscription provided by a computing system, the computer-implemented method being performed by one or more processors executing computer executable instructions for the computer-implemented method, and the computer-implemented method comprising: receiving a subscriber request to establish a connection with a network, the requested network connection being associated with one or more subscribers that are part of a subscription; assigning one or more tokens to the requested network connection, each token representing a stored value of bandwidth, the tokens being distributed from a pool of tokens shared by all of the one or more subscribers of the subscription, and the pool of tokens representing a total available bandwidth for network connections available for the one or more subscribers; receiving a data transfer request from one of the one or more subscribers to transfer data over the requested network connection, the data transfer request including the one or more assigned tokens; and allocating to the requested network connection a specified amount of bandwidth based on a number of tokens assigned from the pool of tokens commensurate with the number of the one or more assigned tokens provided in the data transfer request, even though the specified amount of bandwidth allocated is temporarily greater than an amount of bandwidth otherwise assigned to the requested network connection.