Patent ID: 6883033
Filing Date: 2005-04-19
Classification: H04L

Abstract:
1. A method of regulating admittance of a number of TCP connection requests to a plurality of servers that support to a plurality of applications and a plurality of customers, each of the customers having electronic business activity hosted by the plurality of servers on the basis of a service level agreement that specifies a minimum TCP connection rate that the customer is guaranteed, the method comprising the steps of: receiving incoming workload for the plurality of customers for the plurality of applications into a common buffer, the incoming workload comprising IP packets associated with existing TCP connections and TCP connection requests; taking an IP packet from the common buffer; detecting whether the IP packet taken from the common buffer is a TCP connection request packet or is associated with an existing TCP connection; immediately sending the IP packet to the servers if the IP packet is associated with an existing TCP connection; rejecting the IP packet if associated with a TCP connection request unless the IP packet is necessary to meet the minimum TCP connection rate for the customer associated with the TCP connection request or if sending the IP packet to the servers does not prevent meeting the minimum TCP connection rate for another of the customers.