Patent ID: 8027361

Claim:
A method for reallocating bandwidth for use in establishing virtual private network (VPN) sessions in a network supporting a plurality of VPN session request classes, comprising: identifying termination of a VPN session having an allocated bandwidth associated therewith, wherein the identified VPN session is associated with one of the VPN session request classes; computing, for each of at least one of the VPN session request classes, a respective weighted load factor indicative of whether a current traffic load of the VPN session request class is approaching a load bound parameter associated with the VPN session request class, wherein the weighted load factor associated with the VPN session request class is computed using the current traffic load of the VPN session request class, the load bound parameter associated with the VPN session request class; and a weight associated with the VPN session request class; and the current traffic load of the VPN session request class is computed using a measured bandwidth load of the VPN session request class, and an amount of bandwidth allocated for the VPN session request class; and determining, based on the at least one weighted load factor, whether to reallocate the allocated bandwidth of the terminated VPN session from the one of the VPN session request classes.