The invention provides a traffic regulation technique for media that functions within access protocols by making a percentage of total communication capacity of the media unavailable to end-users as reserve capacity. This reserve capacity is released when appropriate to regulate network traffic. Thus, the traffic regulation technique regulates the traffic by adjusting the percentage of reserve capacity. The reserve capacity may be targeted to a specific type of traffic. In this way, the traffic of the communication system 10 may be regulated so that desired quality of service may be provided for specific end users.