TRAFFIC FLOW MANAGEMENT IN A COMMUNICATIONS NETWORK

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.