Patent ID: 8068416

Claim:
A method of communicating a media stream, the method comprising: measuring port usage data related to each of a plurality of physical ports associated with a link aggregation group; estimating a bandwidth requirement of a requested media stream; adding the estimated bandwidth requirement of the requested media stream to a traffic load at each of the plurality of physical ports to produce an estimated total traffic load of each of the plurality of physical ports; determining a media type associated with the requested media stream; selecting a physical port that has an estimated total traffic load that is less than or equal to a pre-determined maximum; when the media type comprises non-video data, sending the requested media stream to a destination device via the selected physical port, wherein the physical port is selected according to a fixed bandwidth allocation; and when the media type comprises video data: dropping an existing media stream from the selected physical port when the estimated traffic load of the selected physical port exceeds a usage maximum associated with the selected physical port and when the existing media stream can be dropped; assigning the requested media stream to the selected physical port; and sending the requested media stream to the destination device via the selected physical port.