Abstract: A traffic engineering method for reducing congestion and including estimating traffic over at least one link, having a defined capacity, between communication network nodes, thereby to determine an occupied portion of the link capacity and a complementary unoccupied portion of the link capacity, and based on the estimating step, selectably preventing allocation of the occupied portion of the link capacity to at least one capacity requesting client. Also, a method for reducing congestion in a communication network including at least one switch connected to a plurality of links, each having a defined physical capacity including a portion thereof which includes currently unutilized capacity, the method including computing an expected traffic load parameter over at least one switch, and based on the computing step, restricting allocation of at least a portion of at least one link's capacity if the expected traffic load parameter exceeds a threshold.

Abstract: Apparatus and method for constructing a network, including installing a first plurality of communication edges interconnecting a second plurality of communication nodes and determining first and second pluralities of capacity values for the first plurality of communication edges and the second plurality of communication nodes respectively such that, for at least one individual node, the sum of capacity values of the edges connected to that node exceeds the potential capacity value of that node.

Abstract: A method for increasing the total capacity of a network, the network including a first plurality of communication edges interconnecting a second plurality or communication nodes, the first plurality of communication edges and the second plurality of communication nodes having corresponding first and second pluralities of capacity values respectively, the first and second pluralities of capacity values determining the total capacity of the network. The method includes expanding the capacity value of at last an individual communication edge from among the first plurality of communication edges, the individual edge connecting first and second communication nodes from among the second plurality of communication nodes, without expanding the capacity value of the first communication node, wherein the expanding step includes reducing the capacity value of at least one additional communication edge connecting the first communication node and a third node, different from the second node.