Patent ID: 7376080

Claim:
An apparatus operative to shed packet load, comprising a system bus, a processor connected to the system bus; a system memory, connected to the system bus, wherein the system memory maintains a plurality of data structures, the plurality of data structures comprising a packet buffer for storing packets; at least one network interface receive ring for storing pointers to packets in the packet buffer; and at least one receive queue for storing pointers to packets in the packet buffer; at least one network interface, connected to the system bus, operative to receive packets transmitted over a computer network; store received packets in the packet buffer, and maintain pointers to the received packets in a corresponding one of the network interface receive rings; and discard packets transmitted over the computer network when the corresponding network interface receive ring is full; and a network interface driver operative to read a limited number of packet pointers from the at least one network interface receive ring to the receive queue based on a read limit corresponding to the at least one network interface; wherein the apparatus is further operative to adjust the read limit for at least one of the at least one network interfaces based on observed aggregate packet load across the at least one network interfaces.