Methods and apparatus to control traffic in a packet-switched network

• Main Authors: TOWSTER HENRY, MARATHE NIKHIL, NUNEZ JUAN
• Format: Patent
• Language: English
• Published: 15.04.2014
• Subjects: ELECTRIC COMMUNICATION TECHNIQUE; ELECTRICITY; TRANSMISSION OF DIGITAL INFORMATION, e.g. TELEGRAPHICCOMMUNICATION

Methods and apparatus to control traffic in a packet-switched network are disclosed. An example circuit manager includes a usage analyzer to estimate a utilization of a network for a future time interval based on data associated with actual utilization of the network, a rebalancer to detect a trigger event based on the estimated utilization, and to identify a future virtual circuit path through the network for the future time interval based on the estimated utilization when the trigger event is detected, the usage analyzer and the rebalancer to repetitively change mapping of virtual circuit paths including the future virtual circuit path to physical resources to adapt the network to expected usage conditions, a rerouter to identify the future virtual circuit path based on a first predicted weighted cost for a first communication link and a second predicted weighted cost for a second communication link, and a capacity manager to determine whether the identified future virtual circuit path is expected to reduce a future utilization of a communication path below a first threshold, and to determine where additional transmission capacity should be added to the network when the predicted future utilization of the communication path exceeds the first threshold.