Patent ID: 8644157

Claim:
A method for handling network interface card (NIC) congestion by a NIC aware application, the method comprising: (a) outputting, by an application executing on device having a plurality of network interface cards (NICs), a plurality of packets to a transmission queue corresponding to a NIC of the plurality of NICs, the application detecting that the NIC is identified as not congested; (b) identifying, by the device, the NIC as congested responsive to determining that a number of packets stored in the transmission queue has reached a predetermined threshold; (c) outputting, by the application responsive to detecting identification of the NIC as congested, one or more packets to an overflow queue; (d) transmitting, by the device while the NIC is identified as congested, one or more of the plurality of packets stored in the transmission queue; and (e) transmitting, by the device while the NIC is identified as congested, a predetermined number of packets from the overflow queue; (d) and (e) are performed to maintain a predetermined ratio of transmitted packets from the transmission queue to transmitted packets from the overflow queue.