Patent ID: 8493862

Claim:
A method of preventing disruption of a media stream transmitted across a lossy network, the method comprising: applying a lost packet recovery algorithm to the media stream, wherein the lost packet recovery algorithm inserts redundant information into a transmitted data stream including the media stream to permit reconstruction of one or more lost packets; and applying a congestion avoidance algorithm to the transmitted data stream, wherein the congestion avoidance algorithm, if there has been no packet loss above a first predetermined threshold for a predetermined period of time: temporarily increases a data rate of the transmitted data stream by increasing the amount of redundant information inserted into the transmitted data stream; receives channel information from the network including packet loss and monitoring the packet loss to determine whether the network can support the higher data rate of the transmitted data stream; and if the packet loss remains below a second predetermined threshold, increases a bit rate of the media stream while maintaining the higher data rate of the transmitted data stream.