Patent ID: 6937580

Claim:
A method of allocating system capacity to a plurality of terminals in a communication switching system, the capacity being partitioned into a provisioned portion and an unprovisioned portion, a portion of the terminals constituting a pool having a plurality of sub-pools, the method comprising: receiving a bandwidth request message from one of the terminals, the one terminal being configured to submit the bandwidth request message that selectively requests capacity from the provisioned portion and the unprovisioned portion based upon a type of traffic received by the one terminal; allocating the provisioned portion of the capacity to the plurality of sub-pools of the terminals, the provisioned portion of the capacity being arranged into sub-partitions, wherein one of the sub-partitions is not associated with the sub-pools of terminals, and remaining sub-partitions are associated with the sub-pools of terminals; selectively allocating available capacity from the sub-partitions to one of the sub-pool terminals to permit overflow of traffic from the one sub-pool terminal; and selectively allocating the unprovisioned portion of the capacity to the pool to permit overflow of traffic from a terminal within the pool and to a terminal that is not a part of the pool of terminals.