Patent ID: 8432808

Claim:
A gateway system for delayed content delivery in a communications infrastructure that provides sharing of at least a communications link when communicating with at least some of a plurality of subscriber terminals, the gateway system comprising: a content processing subsystem configured to: receive a plurality of content objects from a plurality of content sources; determine, for each content object, if the content object is a delayable object by determining that the content object is being communicated in response to an explicit request for the content object from at least one of the plurality of subscriber terminals; and assign each content object determined to be a delayable object to a delaycast queue; and a communications processing subsystem communicatively coupled with the content processing subsystem and configured to: identify next-scheduled data from an associated content object in the delaycast queue; determine dynamically that excess capacity is presently available on the communications link; and assign the next-scheduled data to a service flow for communication over the communications link within the excess capacity.