AUTOMATED AND ADAPTIVE MANAGEMENT OF BANDWIDTH CAPACITY IN TELECOMMUNICATIONS NETWORKS

Management of the bandwidth capacity of tunnels through a network may be automated such that the network is adaptive to the stochastic nature of incoming traffic. An edge node in the network includes four main elements. Three of the elements, namely tunnel signaling, admission control and path selection, are derived from known technologies, generalized from their particular technologies and enhanced. With the addition of a fourth element, called capacity management, the four elements cooperate to accommodate the capacity needs of the traffic incoming to the network at the edge node. This accommodation is performed by estimating the traffic demand and dynamically adapting tunnels to the traffic demand.