Dynamic ip addressing and quality of service assurance

Abstract

A method for maintaining Quality of Service for communication network subscribers regardless of their log-on location is disclosed. For one embodiment the communications network has a first access point having a first router and a local memory containing at least one user profile containing a subscriber's pool identifier, and a second access point having a second router configured to provide a forwarding rate based on a source address from each of said packets. A service type for a subscriber is defined. A pool identifier corresponding to a service level agreement is assigned to the subscriber. If the subscriber attempts to log-on to the second access point, the subscriber's pool identifier is obtained from a global memory available to the second access point. The pool identifier is used to select a source address. A packet sent by the subscriber is forwarded using the second router, each packet containing the source address.