A Model for Advanced Reservations for Large Scale Conferencing Services

This note describes a model for advanced reservations extended to systems which can serve many customers at the same time. The new model has been developed for a communication network which provides intercity visual conferencing services via a satellite capable of accommodating many conferences simultaneously. Each customer calls in advance to reserve time on a future date. A scheduler either satisfies the request, or offers available alternatives which may or may not be acceptable to the customer. The model is used to examine different measures of quality-of-service and system utilization.