Patent ID: 8769617

Claim:
A method for generating a network usage profile defining at least an estimation of a set of customer devices available for use in communicating with a customer-side network node located at a customer side of an access network, the set of customer devices comprising a set of active devices currently in operative communication with the customer-side network node and a set of inactive devices not currently in operative communication with the customer-side network node, the method comprising: receiving device data from the set of active devices currently in operative communication with the customer-side network node; processing the device data to determine an active devices profile comprising a device type for each of the set of active devices, wherein processing the device data comprises parsing a device type indicator from at least one of a browser type, a user-agent, or a data protocol, the device type indicator being parsed from the device data and estimating the device type as a function of the browser type; receiving a timestamp temporally relating to the device data received in the receiving device data step; receiving a node identifier identifying the customer-side network node; associating the timestamp and the node identifier with the active devices profile to generate a current devices-by-node record, the current devices-by-node record defining the set of active devices communicatively coupled with the customer-side network node identified by the node identifier at the time identified by the timestamp; logging the current devices-by-node record in a devices-by-node log, the devices-by-node log comprising a plurality of devices-by-node records generated over a time duration; analyzing the devices-by-node log to generate a devices-by-node profile as a function of the plurality of devices-by-node records generated over at least a portion of the time duration, the devices-by-node profile defining a set of data handling capabilities for each of the set of customer devices and at least an estimation of the set of customer devices available for use in communicating with the customer-side network node during the at least a portion of the time duration, wherein the network usage profile comprises the devices-by-node profile; and targeting content over the access network to at least one of the set of active devices as a function of the devices-by-node profile such that the at least one of the set of active devices is capable of handling the content according to the set of data handling capabilities.