Predictive capacity management

There is disclosed an apparatus and method for managing resources in a communications network in which a private corporate network links a plurality of customer premises networks at different corporate sites, the links being provided by a public backbone network in accordance with a traffic contract between customer equipment at the corporate sites and switches of the public backbone network. At the customer equipment, there is provided a management apparatus operating to predict required bitrate capacity over a plurality of virtual paths across the backbone network; a routing means operating to find an optimized route for end to end connections across said backbone network; and a resource management means operating to generate a capacity envelope limit data for each virtual path, and re-negotiate a traffic contact between the customer equipment and the public backbone network depending upon the generating capacity limit data of each virtual path. Traffic contract negotiation is made according to predetermined negotiating criteria data, which takes into account a confidence level of actual bitrate capacity across a virtual path staying within the predicted capacity envelope limit data predicted for that virtual path.