Providing soft bandwidth guarantees using elastic TCP-based tunnels

摘要

Method and apparatus for providing enhanced utilization of an existing network of paths between nodes allocated to customer traffic where the paths also carry cross traffic. The system monitors the quality of the network bandwidth utilized by customer data flows over a set of managed paths in a time interval and allocates network resources to customers as a function of measured bandwidth and a desired target thereof by acquiring additional paths or abandoning existing paths. A scheduling function controls the use of the set of managed paths to more nearly achieve the desired quality of network bandwidth delivered to customer traffic.