Apportioning of data traffic between communication channels

A method of apportioning data traffic between a plurality of different communication channels, in which the data traffic is:

• travelling to and/or from at least one user-device in a local area network, in which a plurality of network-reliant applications are used;
• in respect of the network-reliant applications;
• and
• travelling via a local area network gateway device of the local area network, in which the local area network gateway device is configured to communicate via one or more networks outside the local area network using the plurality of different communication channels;
• the method comprising the steps of:
• in respect of each of the plurality of different communication channels, calculating a Quality of Experience, QoE, score, wherein each QoE score is obtained by performing the steps of:
• identifying flows carrying the data traffic via said communication channel;
• identifying flow characteristics of said flows;
• identifying, for the one or more of said plurality of network-reliant applications, a set of one or more flow characteristic types designated as significant flow characteristic types for the network-reliant applications;
• and
• calculating the QoE score for the communication channel in dependence on the identified flow characteristics of said flows and on the identified flow characteristic types designated as significant flow characteristic types for the network-reliant applications in respect of which flows have been identified;
• and
• then apportioning between the communication channels the data traffic in dependence on the calculated QoE scores for each of the plurality of different communication channels.