Patent ID: 7707271

Claim:
A method of operating a communications network comprising a remote network in communication with a local network, said method comprising: transmitting quality of service policy data from said remote network to said local network, said quality of service policy data providing quality of service parameters corresponding to at least one attribute for future communication of content data to a recipient wherein said at least one attribute comprises an identifier of a recipient or at least one attribute of a recipient; operating said local network to: (i) store said quality of service policy data at said local network; (ii) receive from said remote network said at least one identifier of a recipient or at least one attribute of a recipient for the delivery of content data to the recipient; (iii) using said received attribute to analyze said locally stored quality of service policy data to find quality of service parameters for said content data delivery; and (iv) deliver said received content data to said recipient in accordance with said quality of service parameters; wherein: said local network further comprises a local content data store arranged to store said content data; and said content data delivery step (iv) comprises delivering said content data from said local store over said local network with one of a plurality of classes of service selected in accordance with said quality of service parameters.