Patent ID: 7848234

Claim:
A method of providing network access across a shared communications medium between competing users, with a first plurality of users being grouped within a first class and a second plurality of different users being grouped within a second class, the method comprising: determining allowances of network access for a first time interval and allocating network access to each user within the class for the first time interval; providing network access to each user during the first time interval such that no user receives more network access than that user's allowance and no class receives more collective network access than that class' network allowance; monitoring network access usage by each user; forecasting network access usage by each user class during a future time interval based on said monitoring network access usage by each user; and providing network access to each user during the future time interval such that no user receives more network access than that user's allowance and no class receives more collective forecasted network access than that class' forecasted allowance, wherein providing network access to each user comprises allocating network access for the future time interval to each user.