Ensuring privileged users have access to sufficient airtime on wireless networks hosting non-privileged users

A method of providing access to public network devices to a private network accessing an Internet Protocol (IP) for use by private devices and the public devices, comprising:

• providing a residential gateway device having an access point operable in one or more wireless frequency bands for Wi-Fi access to the Internet;
• calculating an amount of free airtime available for the private devices through the access point;
• and
• defining regions along a time-based scale of free airtime availability from zero to 100%, each region allowing or denying access by one or more public devices depending upon an amount of free airtime used by all devices using the access point at a particular point in time;
• defining plurality of threshold levels differentiating the defined regions to provide a portion of the free airtime to the public devices under defined conditions;
• defining a high threshold level differentiating a first region of allowing access to the access point by the public devices from a second region of conditionally rejecting access by the public devices;
• defining a moderate threshold level differentiating the second region from a third region of absolutely denying access by the public devices;
• defining a marginal threshold level differentiating the third region from a fourth region of shedding load of public devices from the private network;
• and
• defining a low threshold level differentiating the fourth region from a fifth region of forcing disconnection of the public network devices from the access point, and wherein the free airtime is calculated through a stateless free airtime preservation (SFATP) process that operates independently for each Wi-Fi band supported by the access point.