Patent ID: 8516556

Claim:
A method for congestion control by a AAA server, comprising: receiving at the AAA server an initial message from a network access server for a session; embedding a hint indicator within a response message to the network access server in response to the received message at the AAA server, wherein the hint indicator identifies a processing priority for subsequent messages received from the client device by the AAA server, and wherein the embedding of hint indicators into messages is enabled at the AAA server based on a congestion level threshold; transmitting the response message having the embedded hint indicator to the network access server; receiving a subsequent message from the network access server at the AAA server within the session; determining whether the subsequent message contains the hint indicator; tracking the subsequent message to identify whether the message is part of a multi-round EAP (Extensible Authentication Protocol) authentication session, and to identify the number of round trips that have occurred within the EAP authentication session; and determining how the subsequent message should be processed based on the hint indicator.