Patent ID: 8908515

Claim:
A method of managing congestion in a wireless communication network, comprising: receiving a first packet, wherein the received first packet does not indicate congestion in the wireless communication network; determining a utilization of RF resources in the wireless communication network; comparing the utilization of RF resources to a utilization criteria; receiving a distribution of modulation and coding schemes that indicates a utilization for each modulation and coding scheme in the distribution; determining resources needed to deliver the first packet to a wireless device running an application that requested the first packet; comparing a network congestion metric to a congestion criteria, wherein the network congestion metric is based on the distribution of modulation and coding schemes, the resources needed by the application, a modulation and coding scheme to be assigned to the first packet, a flow requirement, and an estimated availability of RF resources; marking the first packet to indicate congestion when the utilization of RF resources meets or exceeds the utilization criteria and the network congestion metric meets or exceeds the congestion criteria; and not marking the first packet when the utilization of RF resources is below the utilization criteria and the network congestion metric is below the congestion metric.