Patent ID: 8179798

Claim:
A reputation based connection throttling system for voice over internet protocol communications, the system comprising: one or more processors; and memory coupled to the one or more processors and including instructions, which, when executed by the one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to define: a communications interface operable to receive voice over Internet protocol connection requests associated with external entities prior to connections being established between the external entities and a protected network associated with the communications interface; a reputation engine operable, for each of the external entities, to: derive a reputation associated with an individual external entity; and determine whether the reputation of the individual external entity is one of a reputable reputation or a non-reputable reputation; a connection control engine operable to allow a connection request from the individual external entity to the protected network; and a load balancer engine operable, for each of the external entities having been determined to have a non-reputable reputation, to: determine a degree of non-reputability of the reputation of the external entity having the non-reputable reputation; and in response to the connection request from the external entity having the non-reputable reputation entity being allowed, send voice over Internet protocol data packets originating from the external entity having the non-reputable reputation entity to a particular message interrogation engine based on the degree of non-reputability of the external entity having the non-reputable reputation, wherein data packets from a first set of the external entities having degrees of non-reputability higher than degrees of non-reputability of a second set of the external entities are sent to a first message interrogation engine with a higher inspection load than a second message interrogation engine to which data packets from the second set are sent.