Patent ID: 8559326

Claim:
For a carrier network comprising a plurality of service regions that provide wireless data access to data of an external data network, a method performed by a capacity management agent located between the plurality of service regions and the external data network, the capacity management agent having a processor and non-transitory computer-readable storage, the method for transparently managing capacity of the carrier network, the method comprising: identifying overall resources of each service region of the plurality of service regions; receiving at the capacity management agent, data from the external data network that is intended for a particular service region of the carrier network; identifying, by operation of the processor, available resources of the particular service region, the available resources determined from the overall resources of the particular service region decreased based on a collective usage of the overall resources by a plurality of end users operating in the particular service region; adjusting a rate at which the capacity management agent forwards the data to the particular service region based on the available resources of the particular service region; passing said data from the capacity management agent to the particular service region through the carrier network at a first rate when the available resources of the particular service region are not less than a threshold amount; and buffering said data temporarily to the non-transitory computer-readable storage of the capacity management agent for subsequent passing from the capacity management agent to the particular service region through the carrier network at a second rate when the available resources of the particular service region are less than the threshold amount, wherein the first rate is greater than the second rate.