Patent ID: 7911956

Claim:
An apparatus comprising: a transmitter configured to transmit a data stream, the data stream including a plurality of data packets, the data packets including data packets of a first priority and data packets of a second priority; and a network unit configured to direct the operation of the transmitter, the network unit being configured to divide the data stream into a plurality of sub-streams based on a priority level for the data in each sub-stream, the plurality of sub-streams including a first sub-stream for data packets of the first priority and a second sub-stream for data packets of the second priority; wherein the first priority is higher than the second priority, and wherein the network unit is to establish bandwidths for the sub-streams such that a bandwidth for the data packets of the second priority that is larger than a bandwidth for the data packets of the first priority, the apparatus operating in a network having an infrastructure that drops larger bandwidth data streams before smaller bandwidth data streams; and wherein establishing bandwidths includes the network unit dividing the first sub-stream into a plurality of sub-streams if an amount of bandwidth required to transmit the data packets of the first priority is larger than an amount of bandwidth that is required for data packets of the second priority, wherein each of the plurality of sub-streams resulting from the division of the first sub-stream has a bandwidth that is lower than a bandwidth of the second data sub-stream.