A method and apparatus for load balancing and overload control of packet media gateways under control of a single media gateway controller is provided. More particularly, the invention is directed to a technique for load balancing and overload control by defining an interface between the media gateway (MG) and the media gateway controller (MGC) to handle both load balancing as well as general congestion and resource congestion. In addition, a new event strategy is defined that reports resource utilization so that the media gateway controller (MGC) can take appropriate action to maximize call completion. Such action may include evenly distributing traffic among available media gateways, smart routing around a congested media gateway or intelligent throttling of traffic based on knowledge of specific resources that are congested.