Patent ID: 7801177

Claim:
A method for determining bandwidth allocations among a plurality of programs on each link of a content distribution network comprised of multiple trees, comprising the steps of: broadcasting a plurality of programs from the root node of each of the trees along a path comprising a plurality of links connecting nodes through the corresponding tree to at least one destination node; and allocating bandwidth for each program of said plurality of programs carried on a link having an available bandwidth capacity such that the sum of the allocated bandwidths of all of the programs carried on the link does not exceed the available bandwidth capacity of the link; where the allocated bandwidth for each program carried on a link cannot be below a specified lower bound and the allocated bandwidth for each program can be decreased but not increased from one link to the next link along a path from the corresponding root node of the tree that broadcasts the program to at least one destination node; and assigning a performance function to each program requested at a node where the performance function is the same at all nodes that request the same program and is strictly increasing with the incoming bandwidth for the program at the node; and computing equitable bandwidth allocations among all programs carried on each of the links, where the equitable bandwidth allocations result in the performance function values for each program requested at a node and the lexicographic largest vector of performance function values where the performance function values are sorted in non-decreasing order.