Patent ID: 7936677

Claim:
A method of providing quality of service by a processing module in a network, the method comprising the steps of: receiving, by the processing module, within a sampling period, a set of network data comprising one or more data flows; reading, from said network data, one or more data flows within said sampling period, wherein each of said read one or more data flows is associated with a flow size; categorizing said read one or more data flows into one or more categories, wherein each of said one or more categories is associated with a category size, wherein each of said read one or more data flows is associated with a category from said one or more categories, and wherein the step of categorizing further comprises the step accumulating said flow size of each read data flow into said category size associated with said read data flow; and for said each category of said one or more categories: determining an estimated average data flow bandwidth for said category based on said one or more data flows associated with said category, wherein a total sampled size is based on accumulating all of said each category size associated with said one or more categories, and wherein said determined estimated average data flow bandwidth for said category is based on (a total size of said network data received divided by said sampling period) multiplied by (said category size associated with said category divided by said total sampled size); and if said determined estimated average bandwidth for said category is greater than a defined threshold then requesting quality of service for said category.