Patent ID: 8380850

Claim:
A method, comprising: performing, by a computer system that provides services to clients: initializing the value of a throttle multiplier in the computer system to zero, wherein a throttle multiplier value of zero indicates that all incoming service requests should be serviced and no incoming service requests should be throttled; receiving a plurality of incoming service requests; detecting that the computer system is in an overloaded state with respect to the incoming service requests; in response to said detecting, increasing the value of the throttle multiplier by an amount that is large enough to cause the computer system to return to a non-overloaded state, wherein increasing the value of the throttle multiplier causes an increase in the percentage of incoming service requests that are throttled; in response to the computer system returning to a non-overloaded state, reducing the throttle multiplier value by an amount smaller than the amount by which it was increased, wherein reducing the value of the throttle multiplier causes a decrease in the percentage of incoming service requests that are throttled.