Patent ID: 7974309

Claim:
A method performed by a network device, the method comprising: observing, by one or more devices of the network device, temporal states of bandwidth usage for each of a plurality of network devices; performing, by one or more devices of the network device, a statistical analysis of the temporal states of the bandwidth usage to produce statistical result information; determining, by one or more devices of the network device and based on the statistical result information, that an aggregate of the bandwidth usage for the network devices exceeds a maximum permitted use of bandwidth for a particular time of day segment, of a plurality of time of day segments; and subjecting, by one or more devices of the network device and based on the determining that the aggregated bandwidth usage exceeds the maximum permitted use of bandwidth, fewer than all of the network devices to load distribution for the particular time of day segment, based on the statistical result information corresponding to an adjacent time of day segment, of the plurality of time of day segments, by shifting, from the particular time of day segment to the adjacent time of day segment, allocated bandwidth for use by the fewer than all of the network devices.