An admission control and load balancing system controls admission of packet streams
or calls to a network and balances the packet traffic across the network, improving
quality of service. The system includes a central database which stores information
including cost data associated with individual paths and links across the network.
A processor, in communication with the database, coordinates the admission control
and load balancing decisions, and updates of the database cost data to reflect
the dynamic network conditions, based on input from appropriate data sources. In
one embodiment, referred to as the exact algorithm, the database is consulted by
the admission control points or gatekeepers prior to admitting each arriving packet
stream, and the database contents are updated call-by-call to reflect the allocation
of resources to each admitted stream. In another embodiment, referred to as the
inexact algorithm, control decision as well as database updates occur on a periodic
rather than on a call-by-call basis to promote better scalability. In this embodiment,
the processor periodically calculates admission decisions based on cost data in
the central database. These admission decisions are then periodically forwarded
to a satellite database associated with each gatekeeper, for storage and use in
admission decisions until the next update epoch.
