Patent ID: 7735084

Claim:
A communication processing apparatus for selectively establishing a connection, said communication processing apparatus comprising a electronic processor for performing a connection availability determination process based upon a new connection request, the electronic processor selectively providing transmission of data contained on a server positioned at an endpoint of a network connection based upon a priority of a user requesting data from the, server and located at another endpoint of the network connection; wherein said electronic processor performs a user identification process for identifying the requesting user based on data contained within said connection request, said controlling means further performing said process for establishing said connection only if sufficient communication processing resources required for said user having a user identifier acquired in said user identification process are judged to be available for allocation to said user, the determination of available resources being made, at least in part, based on priority classification information associated with the identified user and resource use condition information for one or more resources corresponding to the priority classification information, and wherein more resources are available for a user having high priority than a user having low priority; and further wherein the communication processing apparatus has access to a data structure, that identifies a plurality of classes of users and members of each user class along with an indication as to whether resources for each user class are available, the data structure being, used in making a determination as to whether establish a user connection based on the new connection request, wherein said electronic processor performs said process for establishing said connection by successively carrying out: a user identification process for identifying the user corresponding to said connection request sender based on a user table which associates user address information with user identifiers; and a resource use condition determination process that associates said identified user with a group identifier that identifies a particular group of users and then searches a resource use condition table for an entry of any available resources based on the available resources to the associated group identifier, wherein said resource use condition determination process also associates said group-identifier, that said identified user associates with, with a maximum connection count and a current connection count, and wherein resources are determined to be available for the identified user only if the current connection count for the associated group identifier is less than the maximum connection count.