Patent ID: 8243628

Claim:
A system for establishing a price for communicating over a communications network, said system comprising: a plurality of network nodes configured to communicate over the communications network, each of said network nodes further configured to determine bandwidth occupancy along each traffic path to which each of said network nodes are connected, wherein the plurality of network nodes are physical devices comprising of hardware components; and a primary network node configured to: initiate a bandwidth occupancy query message to a first network node along a traffic path to which a user is communicating, wherein the traffic path includes the first network node and a last network node with intermediate network nodes along the traffic path between the first network node and the last network node, the first network node updating the bandwidth occupancy query message with current bandwidth occupancy at the first network node and transmits the updated bandwidth occupancy query message to a next intermediary network node along the traffic path, the next intermediary network node updates the bandwidth occupancy query message with current bandwidth occupancy at the next intermediary network node and transmits the updated bandwidth occupancy query message to a next node along the traffic path, and responsive to the next node being the last network node, updating the bandwidth occupancy query message with current bandwidth occupancy at the last network node and transmitting the updated bandwidth occupancy query message back to the primary network node; determine a highest bandwidth occupancy of said network nodes along the traffic path, wherein the highest bandwidth occupancy along the traffic path is a highest current bandwidth occupancy selected among the current bandwidth occupancies reported at each of the network nodes along the traffic path; compute a current price for a user communicating over the traffic path based on the highest bandwidth occupancy; and notify the user of the current price for communicating over the traffic path.