Patent ID: 7441041

Claim:
In a computing environment, a method for regulating the amount of bandwidth consumed by a plurality of download network connections by limiting the number of simultaneous connections to a download server, the method comprising: (a) communicating a content-related request to a download service, and in response to the content-related request, receiving download regulation data corresponding to an acceptance value and a time-window set containing at least one time value; (b) determining based on the acceptance value received in response to the content-related request whether to request the content or whether to delay for a wait time before communicating another content-related request, the wait time corresponding to a wait time value in the time-window set; and (i) when the determination result is to request the content, downloading the content for not more than the duration of a download time, and if the download is not completed within the download time, repeating steps (a) and (b) until the download is finished, the download time corresponding to a download time value in the time-window set, and (ii) when the determination result is to back off, waiting for a duration of time specified by the wait time and then repeating steps (a) and (b) until the download is finished.