Patent ID: 7388832

Claim:
A call-admission controller which allocates, out of shared resources in a communications system, resources required for communication in a plurality of calls of different priorities, the controller comprising: an impact-judging unit configured to estimate, upon detection of a low-priority call, an impact of said low priority call on the communications system; a call-admission threshold-value varying unit configured to adjust a call-admission threshold-value for the low-priority call based on the estimate of said impact, and set, based on said impact, an indicator indicating an ease of allocation of the low-priority call, so as to cause, using the set indicator, a change in said call-admission threshold-value for the low-priority call; a low-priority call admission-determining unit configured to make, based on said adjusted threshold value, a determination of whether to admit said low-priority call; and a defining unit configured to define said indicator as a function determining the ease of the allocation of the low-priority call, wherein said function sets the call-admission threshold-value for the low-priority call to be equivalent to the call-admission threshold-value for a high-priority call when said impact does not exceed a threshold value defined in advance, and sets the call-admission threshold-value for the low-priority call to be lower than the call-admission threshold-value for the high-priority call when said impact exceeds said threshold value defined in advance.