Patent ID: 7363375

Claim:
A method for optimizing the allocation of bandwidth within a network system communicably linked with a network, the network system having one or more client devices and one or more intermediate computing devices that act as an interface between the network and the one or more client devices, the method comprising: passively measuring, with at least one of the intermediate computing devices, throughput of a connection established between at least one of the client devices and the network by measuring an approximate rate of data exchange of the connection in a manner such that no new traffic is placed on the network; determining, with at least one of the intermediate computing devices, whether the measured throughput is less than an amount of bandwidth allocated to the at least one client device; and setting, with at least one of the intermediate computing devices, an amount of bandwidth to be allocated to the at least one client device to an amount equivalent to the measured throughput multiplied by an error variance factor if the measured throughput is less than an amount of bandwidth allocated to the at least one client device.