Patent ID: 6853618

Claim:
An apparatus for establishing circuits in an Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) network comprising: a controller for which a user specifies which requirements can be changed, in what order, and by how much for every quality of service requirement of a Usage Parameter Contract (UPC) of a circuit for which there is an entity in the UPC associated with the circuit which attempts to establish the circuit according to original quality of service requirements of the UPC associated with the circuit, which determines available resources of the ATM network and which automatically relaxes the original quality of service requirements associated with a circuit for the circuit to be formed in the ATM network with the available resources of the ATM network; and a memory which stores a plurality of different quality of service requirements, said memory connected to the controller for the controller to obtain different quality of service requirements for the controller to automatically relax the original quality of service requirements with different quality of service requirements, the memory includes an index having the different quality of service requirements ordered in terms of priority for the controller to choose when the controller relaxes the original quality of service requirements and attempts to establish the circuit.