HIERARCHICAL BANDWIDTH MANAGEMENT IN MULTISERVICE NETWORKS

A hierarchical bandwidth management model for multiservice networks that provide management at a transport level and at a service/application level to provide increased network scalability without sacrificing bandwidth management efficiency and flexibility. In particular, in an Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) environment, a method of hierarchical bandwidth management in a multiservice network supporting various quality of service levels (e.g. EF, AF1, AF2, BE) and a number of applications (e.g. ATM, MPLS, IP, FR) is disclosed. The method includes the steps of: establishing a transport connection tunnel (e.g. an E-Label Switched Path(LSP)) between pairs of the edge nodes in the network; and managing bandwidth of the transport connection tunnel among the quality of service levels and the applications. In an exemplary embodiment the invention also provides a hierarchical admission structure: one at a transport level for the label switched paths and one at a service level for user/application connections. The hierarchical bandwidth management model (exemplified in a method and an apparatus) provides the ability to share and/or partition bandwidth by application and quality of service and the ability of customer-controlled trade-off of bandwidth guarantee (per application/QoS) and network efficiency (i.e. low fragmentation).