Patent ID: 7213050

Claim:
A method for reserving conference resources for a multipoint conference, comprising: receiving a request for a reservation of the multipoint conference; receiving a list of participants; predicting communication paths for a plurality of the participants; estimating a multipoint control unit resource requirement; selecting a first multipoint control unit to host the multipoint conference; determining availability of the multipoint control unit resource requirement at approximately a scheduled start time and for a duration of the multipoint conference; selecting a second multipoint control unit to host the multipoint conference, when the first multipoint control unit does not have the multipoint control unit resource requirement available at the scheduled start time; estimating corresponding network resource requirements associated with a plurality of the communication paths; selecting a first communication path of the plurality of the communication paths; determining availability of the estimated corresponding network resource requirements associated with the first communication path; and selecting a third multipoint control unit when the first communication path does not include the estimated corresponding network resource requirements at approximately the scheduled start time.