Patent ID: 7336605

Claim:
A method for establishing a connection with a guaranteed bandwidth for transmitting data between first and second endpoints, the method comprising: defining a logical link comprising a plurality of parallel physical links between the endpoints; determining a measure of fluctuation that occurs in a rate of transmission of the data over the physical links when the data are distributed for transmission among the physical links, wherein the fluctuation is due to a non-uniform distribution of load among the parallel physical links comprised in the logical link; allocating a link bandwidth on each of the physical communication links for use in conveying the data between the endpoints such that the allocated link bandwidth comprises a predefined safety margin based on the measure of fluctuation, so that a sum of the allocated link bandwidth over the plurality of the parallel physical links is substantially greater than the guaranteed bandwidth of the connection; and conveying the data over the logical link by distributing the data for transmission among the physical links in accordance with the allocated link bandwidth.