The present disclosure generally relates to apparatus, software and methods for managing multi-channel network traffic to alleviate congestion, improve service quality and make efficient use of channel capacity. The disclosed apparatus, software and methods alleviate congestion and improve service quality by minimizing variance within a channel and/or increase overall traffic flow by minimizing the variance between channels. One or both of these objectives can be accomplished using modern portfolio theory to optimize at least one network usage parameter based on the mean and variance of the parameter(s).