Patent ID: 8255466

Claim:
A method of selectively establishing network connectivity, the method comprising: monitoring, on a client, communications activity incident to accessing a network, the communications activity including a request to access the network; identifying, on the client, an application associated with the communications activity; determining, on the client, that the communications activity for the application was initiated in response to user interaction with the client and is separate and distinct from an ambient background process; accessing, on the client, a communications configuration associated with the application, the communications configuration indicating how the application is configured to access the network by performing operations that include: accessing a first setting to be used in response to identifying a first program as the application, accessing a second setting to be used in response to identifying a second program as the application, establishing network connectivity using the first setting in response to identifying communications activity related to the first program, and establishing network connectivity using the second setting that is different than the first setting in response to identifying communications activity related to the second program; selectively establishing, on the client, network connectivity based on the determination that the communications activity for the application was initiated in response to user interaction with the client and is not an ambient background process that generates a communications requirement in response to something other than user interaction; and enabling, on the client, the application to access the network to support the communications activity.