Patent ID: 7760641

Claim:
A method for controlling the distribution of network traffic sent to a network cluster having a plurality of cluster members, the method comprising: maintaining, in a reservation coordinator cluster member of the network cluster, a hierarchical cluster rate limit tree data structure for the entire network cluster and a separate hierarchical member rate limit tree data structure for each cluster member in the plurality of cluster members, wherein the cluster rate limit tree data structure tracks rate limits and rate consumption across all of the plurality of cluster members, and wherein each separate member rate limit tree data structure tracks rate limits and rate consumption for individual applications and application operations of an associated cluster member; receiving network traffic destined for a particular application at a first rate, the network traffic comprising a plurality of client requests for the application, and wherein each of the cluster members is an application server that concurrently provides the application; and distributing the first rate among a subset of the cluster members based on the cluster rate limit tree data structure and the separate member rate limit tree data structures such that each cluster member in the subset has a portion of the first rate and a workload corresponding to the received network traffic is shared amongst the cluster members in the subset of the cluster members, wherein: each cluster member within the subset maintains a token bucket for the particular application, the portion of the first rate distributed to each cluster member within the subset corresponds to a regeneration rate for a respective token bucket, and each of the member rate limit tree data structures comprise nodes in a hierarchical arrangement and rate limits associated with the nodes such that a rate limit of a parent node in the hierarchical arrangement equals a sum of rate limits associated with child nodes of the parent node.