Patent ID: 8295167

Claim:
A method for mitigating network impairments on data quality, comprising: receiving a primary stream at a first input of an edge device while receiving a secondary stream at a second input of the edge device; feeding the primary stream to an output of the edge device for transmission over a network; analyzing a quality of the primary stream and the secondary stream received at the input of the edge device; determining whether the primary streams and secondary stream meet predetermined criteria; switching to feed the secondary stream to the output of the edge device when the primary stream does not meet the predetermined criteria and the secondary stream does meet the predetermined criteria; setting a wait time for switching back to feed the primary stream to the output of the edge device after the switching from feeding the primary stream to feeding the secondary stream, wherein the wait time is equal to a predetermined time, tn, plus an exponentially increasing variable, Ex, wherein the exponentially increasing variable, Ex is initially zero and exponentially increases with each transition from feeding the secondary stream to feeding the primary stream; determining an amount of time elapsed since switching to feed the secondary stream to the output of the edge device; and switching to feed the primary stream to the output of the edge device when the primary stream meets the predetermined criteria and when the determined amount of time elapsed since switching to feed the secondary stream to the output of the edge device is greater than the set wait time.