Abstract: A communications network has multiple resource-allocation layers and incorporates a management structure for allocating resources to allocate resources requested by a first layer of said layers from a second of said layers. At a first layer, the management structure provides an indication to a second layer of the required resources that are to be allocated from the second layer. The second layer automatically offers the required resource together with a condition for use of those resources. This condition includes a notional price factor which is dependent on current demand. Under the control of the manager, the first layer determines if the condition for use of the offered resources is acceptable and, if so, automatically accepts the offered resources from the second layer. In a preferred embodiment, ingress to an underlying multi-wavelength transport layer of the network is controlled via a virtual port which allocates traffic to real ports one for each wavelength supported by the transport layer.

Abstract: A method of managing resources in a switched network including the steps of assigning a respective willingness to pay WtP value to each of a plurality of network users, assigning respective set point values for a network performance parameter for each of a plurality of routers in the network, assigning a respective initial price value to each router which is associated with the network performance parameter at the router, and operating a first control loop which is operable to receive respective measures of the actual network performance at each of the routers, calculate for each router, a plurality of difference values which are the respective differences between the actual performance and the set point for each router, adjust the price value for each router by a factor based on the respective difference value, generate a flow price value for each user by summing the price values for each of the routers in the path of the respective user's desired data flow through the network, allocate a resource share valu

Abstract: A packet scheduling scheme schedules packets from a plurality of queues onto outgoing link. The scheme associates a weight and a virtual start time with each of the queues. Queues are selected, in order of the virtual start time, until a non-empty queue is selected. One or more packets are sent from the selected queue and then the virtual start time is updated, based on the length of the transmitted packet and the weight associated with the selected queue.

Abstract: A communications network has multiple resource-allocation layers and incorporates a management structure for allocating resources to allocate resources requested by a first layer of said layers from a second of said layers. At a first layer, the management structure provides an indication to a second layer of the required resources that are to be allocated from the second layer. The second layer automatically offers the required resource together with a condition for use of those resources. This condition includes a notional price factor which is dependent on current demand. Under the control of the manager, the first layer determines if the condition for use of the offered resources is acceptable and, if so, automatically accepts the offered resources from the second layer. In a preferred embodiment, ingress to an underlying multi-wavelength transport layer of the network is controlled via a virtual port which allocates traffic to real ports one for each wavelength supported by the transport layer.