Patent ID: 8484349

Claim:
A method for dynamically managing subscriber bandwidth over a DSL network with a subscriber's consent comprising: determining bandwidth provided to the subscriber from a service provider; determining bandwidth requirement default rules and critical rules for a plurality of subscriber devices, the default rules comprising information provided by the service provider concerning minimum bandwidth requirements for a service, the critical rules comprising information concerning bandwidth allocation critical to network functionality; allocating the provided bandwidth to each of the plurality of subscriber devices in accordance with the bandwidth requirement default rules and the critical rules; receiving, after allocation, from the subscriber, a request for additional bandwidth for at least one of the plurality of devices; sending, to the subscriber, a list of non-critical active services with their current bandwidth utilization and availability for preemption, the list comprising bandwidth allocated to each of the non-critical services, and a bandwidth available for preemption for each of the non-critical services, wherein bandwidth available for preemption excludes bandwidth assigned according to the critical rules; receiving, from the subscriber, a selection of at least one service from the list of non-critical active services with bandwidth to be preempted; verifying whether the selected preempt service bandwidth complies with the bandwidth requirement default rules and critical rules; rejecting the subscriber selection if the selected preempt services do not meet the bandwidth requirement default rules and critical rules; and allocating bandwidth from the selected preempt services to the at least one of the plurality of subscriber devices requested by the subscriber.