Patent ID: 8385207

Claim:
A method of network congestion management, comprising: on a server side of a network system including a plurality of client devices: inserting a probe frame into a link level path in data traffic in the network system from a first compliant endpoint in the network system, wherein the network system comprises a plurality of compliant endpoints that reflect the probe frame and a plurality of non-compliant endpoints incapable of reflecting the probe frame, wherein the compliant endpoints comprise network storage devices including at least one transmitting device and at least one receiving device, and upon the probe reaching a non-compliant endpoint, the probe frame appears lost due to network or endpoint congestion; reflecting the probe frame from a second compliant endpoint in the network back to the first endpoint, wherein reflecting comprises transmitting the probe frame back to the endpoint that inserted the probe frame; receiving the reflected probe frame at the first endpoint via the network; determining an aggregate round-trip delay based on flow of the probe frame internally and separately through the first compliant end point and externally through the network; and correlating the aggregate delay and storage queuing operation population for throttling injected network traffic according to the determined aggregate delay to manage network traffic congestion and flow control within the first compliant endpoint, wherein upon network and endpoint traffic congestion being detected, flow is controlled within a compliant endpoint based on: for a storage read operation: the compliant endpoints manage network flow by adjusting a rate of returning read data to a requester; and for a storage write operation: the compliant endpoints manage network flow by adjusting a rate used to request data from a client device.