Patent ID: 7912968

Claim:
A method, within a data processing system comprising a provisioning host, for end to end (e2e) service level agreement (SLA) compliance across both managed and unmanaged network segments, the method comprising: identifying, using the provisioning host, both a managed segment and an unmanaged segment of an e2e network for a communications path implicated by an SLA; determining, using the provisioning host, an observed delay for the unmanaged segment of the e2e network; computing, using the provisioning host and from a desired delay for the communications path and the observed delay, a differential delay; and, constraining, using the provisioning host, the managed segment to meet the differential delay in order to assure meeting the desired delay for the communications path implicated by the SLA; wherein the constraining comprises: ordering each of different sub-domains in the managed segment according to a minimum delay each of the different sub-domains can achieve; allocating portions of the differential delay according to the ordering, wherein a sub-domain able to achieve a minimum delay lower than minimum delays of all the other sub-domains is allocated a greatest portion of the differential delay, and a sub-domain able to achieve a minimum delay greater than minimum delays of all the other sub-domains is allocated a least portion of the differential delay.