Patent ID: 7567511

Claim:
Apparatus for determining a cost of providing a virtual private network service, said apparatus comprising: means for identifying a plurality of traffic matrices, said traffic matrices representing constraints on traffic flows in said virtual private network service; and means for calculating said cost as a function of said plurality of traffic matrices, wherein said means for calculating said cost calculates said cost as a function of: the most-likely amount of bandwidth used by a customer; maximizing the expression: ( ∑ i , j ⁢ ⁢ d ij ) ! ( ∏ i , j ⁢ ⁢ d ij ) ! where d ij represents the size of the connection between nodes i and j; and calculates said cost as a function G of a network bandwidth demand matrix D: max D ⁢ G ⁡ ( D ) = ( ∑ i , j ⁢ ⁢ d ij ) ⁢ ln ( ∑ i , j ⁢ ⁢ d ij ) - ∑ i , j ⁢ ⁢ d ij ⁢ ln ⁢ ⁢ d ij subject ⁢ ⁢ to ⁢ ∑ j ⁢ ⁢ d ij ≤ u i , where d ij represents the size of the connection between nodes i and j.