Patent ID: 8311197

Claim:
A method of assigning resources from a pool of conferences resources provided by a conference system, the method comprising: reserving at least some of the pool of conference resources for guaranteed status participants to a conference having an allocated number of resources allocated to the conference, to enable the guaranteed status participants to participate in the conference, the guaranteed resources comprising at least one of a communication port, an interface, and a media termination port; during the conference, automatically assigning conference resources to a plurality of participants as the participants join the conference; receiving at least one other participant to the conference and assigning a provisional status to the at least one other participant; allocating unused resources in the pool of conference resources as provisional resources, the provisional resources comprising at least one of a communication port, an interface, and a media termination port; admitting the at least one provisional status participant to participate in the conference utilizing the provisional resources; and if a number of assigned conference resources exceeds the allocated number of resources, modifying at least one assigned resource.