Traffic flow management in a communications network
AssigneeNortel Networks Limited
InventorsPaul Kirby, Peter Hamer
Life of this patent
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Abstract
Admission of rapidly varying traffic flows to a communications network is controlled by sampling the traffic flows each at an ingress, and sampling an aggregate flow of said flows at some or all of the resources used by the aggregate flow. From this sampling, a mean bandwidth requirement for each traffic flow and a measure of the variance from that mean are determined. First and second prices for the mean and variance components of the controlled traffic flows that are calculated. These price calculations are used to determine an admission cost for each said flow so as to regulate the admission of that flow via a feedback price mechanism.
Claims20
A method of controlling admission of a traffic flow to a communications network, the method comprising sampling the traffic flow, determining from said sampling a mean bandwidth requirement for the traffic flow and a measure of the variance from that mean, and determining from said mean and variance a price for admission of the traffic flow to the network.
A method of controlling traffic flow in a communications packet network, the method comprising determining for flows within the network a mean utilisation requirement and a measure of a variance from that mean, and determining from said mean and variance a bandwidth pricing so as to control the admission of said flows to the network.
A method of controlling admission of traffic flows to a communications network, the method comprising sampling the traffic flows each at an ingress, and sampling an aggregate flow of said flows at some or all of the resources used by the aggregate flow, determining from said sampling a mean bandwidth requirement for each traffic flow and a measure of the variance from that mean, determining from said mean and variance measurements first and second prices for the mean and variance components of the controlled traffic flows that are admitted to the network, and determining from said first and second prices an admission cost for each said flow so as to regulate the admission of that flow.
A method as claimed in claim and embodied as software in machine readable form on a storage medium.
An admission control arrangement for a communications network, the arrangement comprising sampling means for sampling a traffic flow, means for determining from said sampling means a measure of mean bandwidth requirement and of a variance from that mean, and price computation means for determining from said mean and variance a cost or price for bandwidth case so as to provide ingress price control for admission of the traffic flow to the network.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.