Patent ID: 8560693

Claim:
A system for maintaining a data structure useful for allocating a resource to a resource request based on application of a persistence policy comprising: first hardware logic for making an entry in the data structure representing an allocation, upon or after implementation of the allocation, and time-stamping the entry with a time-stamp indicating the time when or about when the allocation is terminated; and second logic for scanning the data structure, and deleting entries for which a time-out condition is determined to exist, wherein the second logic has access to a current time, and determines that a time-out condition exists if the time-stamp value equals or exceeds the current time by a programmable amount, and wherein the programmable amount is programmable according to factors including: whether a connection corresponding to the entry is a layer 4 or layers 5-7 connection, category of service requested by the resource request, and state of the connection corresponding to the entry in the data structure.