A simplified methodology for accomplishing traffic management in a packet
based network is achieved by allowing allocation of bandwidth based on a
count of the number of endpoint connections associated with a specific
service for a corresponding network device. A network device (e.g., IP
router) can be configured to count the number of TCP/IP and UDP/IP
connections and bandwidth usage per interface. The counting can be done
by identifying the IP Addresses, Type of Service (TOS), and TCP/UDP
and/or UDP/IP socket number range in the IP Header of a packet and then
querying a specific communication type. When reaching the maximum allowed
connections or bandwidth for a specific service, the network device
(e.g., IP router) stops forwarding any new calls by means of dropping
packets of new calls and informing the given endpoints to disconnect the
new calls. In one exemplary embodiment of the invention, a procedure for
managing traffic flowing through individual routers of a packet network
includes the steps of reserving a given amount of bandwidth on interfaces
of the individual routers for specific types of communications traffic,
periodically querying endpoint connections based on data from a
corresponding router connection table, receiving responses from the
periodic querying to determine a current connection status and bandwidth
allocation of said endpoints and calculating current bandwidth allocation
for a specific type communications service on an interface handled by the
router. The router admits additional communications traffic for a
specific type of communications service if bandwidth is available.