Patent ID: 7920479

Claim:
A method comprising, coupling a customer network to a plurality of service providers (SPs) via a customer router which has a processor and a plurality of connections that each connect to a different one of the SPs, each SP providing services to the customer network at a cost, the cost based on a tiered pricing structure that includes one or more tiers that each correlate a particular amount of data transferred over a connection to a particular cost; selecting, by the customer router, a target tier in the tiered pricing structure of each SP based on one or more previously determined rollup values that represent aggregate measurements of traffic over corresponding previous rollup periods; during a current rollup period, collecting measurement data that indicates an amount of data transferred on each of the connections; generating, by the customer router, a momentary target utilization rate (MTUR) for each SP by analyzing the collected measurement data, the MTUR representing a cumulative utilization of an SP's services at a particular instant in time during the current rollup period; distributing, by the customer router, data on each of the connections to transfer data with different ones of the plurality of SPs during the current rollup period, the amount of data transferred on each of the connections selected based at least in part on the MTUR and the target tier for each SP to distribute data among the different ones of the plurality of SPs to minimize overall cost of the services provided to the customer network by the plurality of SPs; determining, by the customer router, that an amount of data transferred during the current rollup period particular connection to a particular SP exceeds an amount of data associated with the target tier the particular SP; in response to the determining, selecting a new target tier to be target tier for the particular SP; and repeating the collecting, generating, distributing, determining and selecting until an end of the current rollup period.