Patent ID: 7072968

Claim:
A bandwidth control service management apparatus of a network operated by a network offerer and a customer comprising: a customer interface for accepting, from the customer, an available bandwidth of a premium bandwidth control service demand with a higher priority than a regular bandwidth control service of best effort type, wherein the premium bandwidth control service demand is for changing the regular bandwidth control service of best effort type to the premium bandwidth control service, a network interface for accepting an applied threshold value of the premium bandwidth control service within the entire network from the network offerer, and a serviceable bandwidth manager for comparing an available bandwidth of the premium bandwidth control service demand with the applied threshold value to determine whether or not the premium bandwidth control service is available, for notifying the result to the customer through the customer interface, and for demanding that the network should secure a bandwidth in order that the customer who has received the notification of a service permission can start the premium bandwidth control service when the premium bandwidth control service is determined to be available, the serviceable bandwidth manager transmitting to the network offerer a present applied threshold value in response to a collection demand by the network offerer, and adopting a changed applied threshold value for the determination when the network offerer has changed the applied threshold value.