Patent ID: 7898962

Claim:
A method for managing bandwidth in a communications network having at least a first source and at least a first sink, the method comprising: a retransmission budgeting entity (RBE) specifying a retransmission budget for the first sink; one of the first sink and the first source determining that the first sink did not successfully receive a communication transmitted from the first source; one of the first sink, the first source, and the RBE determining, based on the retransmission budget, whether to request retransmission of the communication from the first source to the first sink; and the RBE dynamically adjusting the retransmission budget based on one or more characteristics of the communications network, wherein the one or more characteristics comprise a number of requests for retransmission transmitted by the first sink, wherein: the first sink determines that the communication from the first source was not successfully received; the first sink counts its requests for retransmission; the first sink compares the retransmission budget with the number of its retransmission requests to determine whether to request retransmission of the communication; the first sink transmits to the first source a request for retransmission of the communication only if the request for retransmission would not exceed the retransmission budget; and the first sink receives a retransmission of the communication from the first source.