Abstract: A system for management of communications bandwidth utilization is disclosed in which delays are deliberately introduced when responding to requests for resources. Appropriately introducing delays can disperse the peak bandwidth consumption event over a longer period, however peak bandwidth utilization is decreased when responding to numerous substantially simultaneous requests. The deliberately introduced delays can be generated in a range bounded above by an acceptable response time (“ART”). The ART may be communicated to a server as part of the request, for instance in the ‘port’ or ‘path’ portion of a URI.