Patent ID: 7760639

Claim:
A method for handling network overload, comprising: receiving one or more requests at a network element from a previous hop, wherein an originating client originates the one or more requests to establish communication with a terminating client; determining, at the network element, if the network element processing the one or more requests is overloaded; generating a pushback message, at the network element, if the network element is overloaded, wherein the pushback message includes request gapping information indicating one or more of a duration, an interval, and a frequency for transmitting requests; sending the pushback message from the network element to the previous hop in a network, wherein the previous hop is one or more other network elements operable to route the one or more requests to the network element processing the one or more requests and operable to route the pushback message to the originating client for processing and the previous hop does not process the pushback message; receiving the pushback message; determining if a request gapping parameter is satisfied; and exercising a request gapping option if the request gapping parameter is not satisfied.