Patent ID: 8189621

Claim:
A method of operating a computer to initiate a communication at a performance level requested by an application executing on the computer in conjunction with an operating system of the computer, the application generating data for transmission, the method comprising: operating the computer to perform the acts of: a) receiving in a first component of the computer separate from the application a request from the application of the computer to initiate the communication at the performance level; b) within the first component, mapping the requested performance level to a set of communications parameters, wherein the mapping comprises determining a noise level and a required number of subchannels that is required to meet the requested performance level; c) within a second component of the computer, detecting an energy level on subchannels of the plurality of subchannels; d) within a third component of the computer, determining whether a number of subchannels having an energy level below the noise level that are available is less than the required number of subchannels; e) when the number of subchannels having the energy level below the noise level is less than the required number of subchannels, by the computer: i) sending a signal to the application; and ii) in response to the signal, increasing, by the application, compression used to generate the data; and f) when the number of subchannels having the energy level below the noise level is not less than the required number of subchannels, communicating, by the computer, the data from the application using a set of subchannels of the plurality of subchannels, the set containing a number of subchannels selected based on the required number of subchannels, the number of subchannels contained in the set being less than the number of subchannels having the energy level below the noise level.