Patent ID: 7636793

Claim:
A method executed by multiple dispersed file servers for adapting data received from a remote sending device in a single heterogeneous network according to quality of service parameters associated with a plurality of network segments that are downstream from the dispersed file servers, the method comprising: receiving at the dispersed file servers instructions, wherein the instructions instruct the dispersed file servers to adapt the data; receiving the data from the remote sending device; adapting the data to conform to quality of service parameters associated with each network segment downstream from one of the dispersed file servers therein adapting the data at the dispersed file servers rather than adapting the data at the remote sending device wherein the dispersed file servers are located between the remote sending device and the plurality of network segments in the single heterogeneous network, the single heterogeneous network comprising a plurality of sub-networks, the plurality of sub-networks comprising a combination of peer-to-peer and client/server network types, a combination of local and wide area networks, and a hybrid combination of physical and logical network constructions, the physical and logical network constructions including broadcast, network bus, network ring, and logical star constructions, wherein the data is adapted by changing the protocol and by implementing a compression mechanism in response to a determination that packet size of the data exceeds a maximum transmission unit (MTU) of each network segment; transmitting the adapted data along each network segment to one of a plurality of segment endpoints wherein the segment endpoints comprise at least one recipient client and at least one sub-segment dispersed file server that further adapts the data previously adapted to conform the data according to quality of service parameters associated with a network sub-segment adjacent to and downstream from the at least one of the plurality of segment endpoints comprising the sub-segment dispersed file server; detecting a change in the quality of service parameters associated with at least one of the plurality of network segments; and requesting new programming for adapting the data from an administrator upon detecting a change in the quality of service parameters; wherein values for the quality of service parameters vary among the plurality of network segments.