Patent ID: 8395988

Claim:
A method, comprising: at least one data processing device of a data computing system accessing, from memory coupled to said at least one data processing device, instructions causing said at least one data processing device to determine when one of a plurality of call servers has experienced an instance of connectivity thereto being lost by sending a monitoring message to said one call server periodically; said at least one data processing device accessing, from said memory, instructions causing said at least one data processing device to associate a first penalty with said one call server for each instance of said lost connectivity thereby generating a current accumulated penalty value for said one call server; said at least one data processing device accessing, from said memory, instructions causing said at least one data processing device to control operability of said one call server dependent upon the current accumulated penalty value, wherein causing said at least one data processing device to control operability includes causing said at least one data processing device to transition said one call server from an active operational status to an inactive operational status in response to incrementing the current accumulated penalty value to reach a first upper penalty threshold value and causing said at least one data processing device to transition said one call server from the inactive operational status to the active operational status in response to reducing the current accumulated penalty value from the first prescribed penalty threshold value to reach a second lower penalty threshold value, wherein the current accumulated penalty value reaches the first upper penalty threshold value when said one call server fails to reply to said monitoring message consecutively; and said at least one data processing device accessing, from said memory, instructions causing said at least one data processing device to reduce the current accumulated penalty value at by a rate of reduction in response to causing said at least one data processing device to transition said one call server from the active operational status to the inactive operational status wherein causing said at least one data processing device to reduce the current accumulated penalty value includes decrementing the current accumulated penalty value by a fixed percentage thereof for each expiration of a first duration of time.