ADMISSION CONTROL IN A TELECOMMUNICATION NETWORK

摘要

A method and system for performing admission control in a packet-based telecommunication network (10) is disclosed. The network (10) includes a backbone network (12) coupled between at least two access networks (14, 16). When a first user on a first access network (14) wants to communicate with a second user located on a different access network (16), a request is made to a quality server (42) whether network resources are available. The quality server (42) separately monitors both access networks (14, 16) ad the backbone network (12) and determines whether network resources are available to satisfy the request. In one embodiment, a two-tier approach is used wherein a coordinator module (70) interacts with an admission control subsystem (72) including a plurality of subsystem modules (74. Each admission control subsystem module (74) is responsible for monitoring a part of the network, such as one access network or a backbone network. The coordinator module (70) determines which subsystem modules (74) are associated with the user request and interrogates such subsystem modules as to resource availability. Each subsystem module (74) makes a determination whether the user request can be satisfied for its respective network portion and returns a positive or negative response to the coordinator module (70) based on the network capacity. The coordinator module (70) then responds to the user request with the appropriate response.