Patent ID: 8185640

Claim:
A method comprising: discovering a set of nodes within a Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) network, the set of nodes including a plurality of media aggregation manager nodes, a plurality of routers and a plurality of communities; receiving an indication of a first media aggregation manager node of the set of nodes that is configured to serve as a reservation protocol session proxy for one or more communication devices associated with a first community of the plurality of communities; receiving an indication of a second media aggregation manager node of the set of nodes that is configured to serve as a reservation protocol session proxy for one or more communication devices associated with a second community of the plurality of communities; graphically depicting a plurality of paths through the VoIP network, each path depiction representing a potential path over which media packets are capable of being transferred between the first community and the second community; receiving a selection of a path of the graphically depicted plurality of paths; configuring a set of routers of the plurality of routers that are part of a selected path of the plurality of paths to route media packets exchanged between the first community and the second community over the selected path; deallocating at least a portion of bandwidth available to the set of routers of the plurality of routers that are part of the selected path; allocating at least a portion of the deallocated bandwidth available to the set of routers of the plurality of routers that are part of the selected path; and establishing a reservation protocol session between the first media aggregation manager node and the second media aggregation manager node onto which a plurality of application sessions among the one or more communication devices of the first community and the one or more communication devices of the second community are to be multiplexed.