Critical resource management is disclosed. In one embodiment of the invention, a method is provided. First, the method detects whether maximum utilization of a critical resource has been reached. For example, the critical resource can be a number of modems within a modem pool of an Internet Server Provider (ISP). Second, the method determines the priority of access to this critical resource for each of a plurality of clients. For example, such clients can be end-user computers attempting to dial into the modem pool of the ISP. Third, the method denies access to at least one of the clients that have the lowest priority of access to the critical resource. For example, this can mean that a client currently connected to the ISP via a modem of the model pool is disconnected, or can mean that a client attempting to dial into the ISP is refused access.