Patent ID: 7886074

Claim:
In a communications environment with a receiver computing device receiving a plurality of incoming communications flows over a common communications link, a method for allocating incoming bandwidth of the common communications link among the plurality of incoming communications flows, the method comprising: assigning a priority to each incoming communications flow; deciding whether to re-allocate the incoming bandwidth of the common communications link among the incoming communications flows, wherein the deciding comprises predicting whether a first incoming communication flow will use more bandwidth than the first incoming communication flow is allocated by monitoring an outgoing communications flow from the receiver computing device to a source of the first incoming communications flow and, if an indication is seen in at least one message of the monitored outgoing communications flow that the first incoming communications flow will use more bandwidth in response to the at least one message, deciding to re-allocate; and if a decision is made to re-allocate the incoming bandwidth, then: selecting an incoming communications flow with an assigned priority lower than the assigned priority of another incoming communications flow; and increasing an average response time for messages received over the selected incoming communications flow, wherein assigning a priority to an incoming communications flow comprises: analyzing input from a user of the receiver computing device associating an input priority with an application associated with the incoming communications flow; and deriving a priority for the incoming communications flow from the input priority associated with the application associated with the incoming communications flow.