Patent ID: 8488451

Claim:
A method comprising: receiving a communication at a residential gateway from a local network client residing on a network device, wherein the local network client is a client of the residential gateway; identifying a client transmission type of the local network client; identifying a bandwidth allocation rule associated with the client transmission type, wherein the bandwidth allocation rule includes an indication of a local network client status associated with the local network client, wherein the local network client status is one of a low bandwidth status and a high bandwidth status; determining, based on a profile associated with the local network client, whether programming identified in the communication is disproportionate with respect to the local network client status; altering the programming according to the identified bandwidth allocation rule when the programming identified in the communication is identified as disproportionate with respect to the local network client status; determining a residential gateway status, wherein the residential gateway status is one of busy and not busy; allocating a high-speed processor and a high-speed port to a first group of network devices and allocating a low-speed processor and a low-speed port to a second group of network devices, wherein the local network client is included in the first group of network devices or the second group of network devices based on the bandwidth allocation rule associated with the local network client, wherein the first group of network devices and the second group of network devices include other local network clients, and wherein each of the other local network clients is associated with a corresponding bandwidth allocation rule, and wherein a particular client, of the other local network clients, is included in the first group of network devices or the second group of network devices based on a particular bandwidth allocation rule corresponding to the particular client; and ignoring the communication received from the local network client when the residential gateway status is determined to be busy and the local network client status is identified as the low bandwidth status.