Patent ID: 8139607

Claim:
A non-transitory computer readable medium, comprising program instructions, executable by a processor, for supporting flexible bandwidth allocation, the program instructions comprising instructions to: respond to receiving a subscriber indication specifying bandwidth allocation information including information selected from a data allocation indicative of a bandwidth allocated to a data service, a telephony allocation indicative of a bandwidth allocated to a telephony service, and a multimedia allocation indicative of bandwidth allocated to a multimedia service by: approving a bandwidth allocation constraint in the bandwidth allocation information against a maximum cumulative bandwidth constraint, a minimum telephony bandwidth constraint, a minimum data bandwidth constraint, and a minimum multimedia bandwidth constraint; and modifying a multimedia bandwidth allocation value indicative of bandwidth allocated to a multimedia content delivery service; and respond to receiving a subscriber request for content by: generating a set top box request for content indicating a multimedia content program and including allocation-influenced information determined, at least in part, by the multimedia bandwidth allocation value; and sending the set top box request for content to a multimedia service provider.