Patent ID: 9253101
Filing Date: 2016-02-02
CPC Classification: H04L,H04M,H04W

Claim Text:
1. A method for metering usage, on a group of lines subject to a group user agreement, of data processing capacity of a network, the method comprising: receiving usage reports from respective lines of the group of lines; maintaining a usage total, over the group of lines, of usage that has been reported by the respective lines of the group of lines; maintaining an outstanding total, over the group of lines, of outstanding usage quotas that have been granted to the respective lines of the group of lines, the outstanding usage quota of a respective line being one or more data quotas granted to the respective line of the group of lines but not reported as being used by the respective line; detecting at least one violation event based on a comparison between the usage total and a limit, the limit being based on one of two or more data usage milestones and an accuracy threshold, the accuracy threshold indicating an allowed discrepancy between an actual usage by the group of lines and the usage total, the at least one violation event indicating that the outstanding total violates the limit; upon detecting the at least one violation event, automatically selecting one or more lines of the group of lines for quota reallocation; and automatically transmitting an instruction to one or more processors serving the one or more lines selected, but to no processor serving any other line of the group of lines, that causes a new quota to be negotiated for the one or more lines selected.