Patent ID: 8923340

Claim:
A method of operating a computer to initiate a communication at a performance level requested by an application executing on the computer in conjunction with an operating system of the computer, the application generating data for transmission, the method comprising: operating the computer to perform the acts of: a) receiving in a component of the computer separate from the application a request from the application of the computer to initiate the communication at the performance level; b) within the component, mapping the requested performance level to a set of communications parameters, wherein the mapping comprises determining a noise level and how many subchannels of a plurality of subchannels are required to meet the requested performance level; c) when a number of available subchannels having the energy level below the noise level is less than the determined number of subchannels required to meet the requested performance level, by the computer: i) sending a signal to the application; and ii) in response to the signal, increasing compression used within the application to represent the data; and d) when the number of available subchannels having the energy level below the noise level is not less than the determined number of subchannels required to meet the requested performance level, communicating, by the computer, the data from the application using a set of subchannels of the plurality of subchannels, the set containing a number of subchannels selected based on the determining of how many subchannels are required, the number of subchannels contained in the set being less than the number of available subchannels having the energy level below the noise level.