Patent ID: 7376084

Claim:
A method for performing resource allocation and admission control of Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) in a communications network with a plurality of customer endpoints and a plurality of provider edge routers, said method comprising: receiving a new customer VPN request; determining whether to admit or reject said new customer VPN request based upon available capacity on paths between said plurality of provider edge routers (PEs) and customer traffic between said customer endpoints and said plurality of provider edge routers; provisioning edge resources to optimize routing table sizes and backhaul distance upon receiving said new customer VPN request; and computing initial traffic matrix using customer specified peak rate traffic information and available capacity information, wherein said computing initial traffic matrix comprises: finding a traffic matrix TM(i,j) for traffic from one of said customer endpoints, CE j to one of said customer endpoints, CE j using a gravity model and the customer specified peak rate traffic information as inputs, for each customer endpoint traffic source i and traffic sink j, where i<>j, wherein said gravity model is enhanced using an entropy model comprising a penalized least-squares estimation formulation specified as: Min x {||y−Ax|| 2 +λ 2 Σ {k:gk>0} x k /T log ( x k /g k )} where x represents a vector of traffic matrix variables such that x i indicates the traffic from source s j to destination d k , where y represents a vector of link traffic measurements such that y i indicates the traffic on link i, where A represents a routing matrix indicating which variables x i sum together to a given y i , where λ represents a small real number, where g represents a vector of traffic matrix estimates computed using said Gravity Model, where T represents a total traffic in the network; and initiating PE-PE traffic monitoring for all traffic source and sink pair (ij).