Patent ID: 8014273

Claim:
A method, comprising: (a) automatically determining, by a service reporting agent, that first and third users may intend to access the Internet; (b) automatically determining, by the service reporting agent, that the first and third users, pursuant to a service level agreement with an Internet Service Provider (“ISP”), are each entitled to receive a first level of Internet service, wherein different Internet service level agreements of the ISP with different users have different levels of service; (c) automatically determining, by a service modification agent, that a usage level of the Internet when the first and third users access the Internet is less than a selected threshold; (d) automatically determining whether the first and third users are currently upgradable; (e) in response to determining that the Internet usage level is less than the selected threshold and that the first user is currently upgradable, automatically providing, by the service reporting agent, the first user with a second level of service provided in a second service level agreement with a different customer when the first user accesses the Internet, the second level of service being of a higher quality than the first level of service; (f) in response to determining that the Internet usage level is less than the selected threshold and that the third user is not currently upgradable, automatically not providing, by the service reporting agent, the third user with the second level of service when the third user accesses the Internet; wherein the service reporting agent receives usage performance constraints from the ISP, the constraints mapping to a set of applications complying with the constraints, and provides the constraints and/or set of applications to the first user to enable the first user to determine what applications can be used by the first user; and wherein the constraints comprise a plurality of minimum bandwidth, maximum packet loss, maximum packet delay, and maximum jitter, wherein the constraints correspond to the second level of service and wherein the service reporting agent provides the first user with a time limit for the first user's upgrade to the second level of service.