| 摘要 |
Access to a teleconferencing system is granted to a prospective attendee (1) for a predetermined duration, by dating the user for access to the facilities (107) for a predetermined duration, and allocating resources (110) to the user for the predetermined duration. This duration can be defined in terms of an expiry date, or a predetermined number of separate occasions for which access to the facilities is permitted, or a combination of both. To allow a user to break out of a conference and rejoin it, multiple accessions within a predetermined period (such as one day) may be counted as a single accession in counting towards the predetermined number of accessions. Different users may be validated for use of the same resources for different durations. This arrangement provides many of the existing capabilities of both booked and reservationless conferences in a single unified system. A reservationless conference facility can be emulated by specifying a very large permitted number of calls, or an expiry date in the distant future. To emulate a booked call, an individual attendee can be limited to just one accession, or to a very limited time range. Unlike a conventional booked call, the actual conference time can be rescheduled, provided it remains within the selected constraints. To encourage responsible use of the reservation facilities, allocation of resources may be prioritised for users having the most restricted duration of access. In particular, the guarantee of availability for a pre-booked call can be emulated by the prioritisation of calls for which the permitted users have the most restricted validity terms. This provides a form of demand-management, as the network can identify the number of passcodes valid at any one time and schedule resources accordingly.
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