Patent ID: 8792342

Claim:
A bandwidth guaranteeing apparatus comprising: a controller that collects information indicating bandwidth available for committed information rate for a plurality of devices on an OVC between a user-side apparatus and the bandwidth guaranteeing apparatus; and a determiner that obtains the smallest value of the information indicating bandwidth available for committed information rate collected by the controller and upon a bandwidth change request that is for the OVC and from the user-side apparatus, determines whether the bandwidth change request can be accepted, based on the obtained guaranteed information indicating bandwidth available for committed information rate, wherein the controller sets addresses of a transmission origin and transmission destination in a given communication frame; periodically requests the devices on the OVC for the information indicating bandwidth available for committed information rates; and based on the addresses, correlates and stores to a storage device in an updatable manner, the devices and the information indicating bandwidth available for committed information rate in communication frame responses from the devices.