Patent ID: 8824300

Claim:
A method, comprising: receiving a first congestion message associated with traffic congestion in a signaling network; starting a first timer in response to receiving the first congestion message, wherein the first timer is configured to determine when to throttle back network traffic in response to network congestion; receiving a second congestion message; determining whether the second congestion message was received before the first timer expired or after the first timer expired; when the second congestion message was received after the first timer expired: restarting the first timer when the second congestion message was received; and storing the network traffic in a local database while the first timer is running; and when the second congestion message was received before the first timer expired: starting a second timer when the second congestion message was received; sending a portion of network traffic, which was originally intended for a first destination, to a second destination in the network until the second timer expires; restarting the second timer; and throttling back network traffic to the first destination for a duration of time resulting from the restarting of the second timer, wherein the network traffic is throttled back using a step-wise backoff algorithm to reduce the network traffic at a rate of one message per second.