Patent ID: 8589498

Claim:
A method of providing overload protection in a communication system, comprising: determining, in a communication server, whether a communication system overload condition is present in the communication system; determining, in the communication server, an importance rating of a first communication session message associated with the communication system, wherein the importance rating for the first communication session message is determined from a phase of the first communication session message in a first communication session, wherein the first communication session message is a Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) INVITE message, and wherein the phase of the first communication session message is determined based on at least two of: a SIP INVITE IMSorig message, a SIP INVITE with a Origdone tag, a SIP INVITE with an IMS origdone tag, a SIP INVITE with an Imsterm tag, a SIP INVITE with a termdone tag, and a SIP INVITE with an IMS tag; and in response to determining an overload condition and an importance rating for the first communication session message that is less than one of an importance rating of a second communication session message or a first threshold, the communication server applying a throttling procedure to the first communication session.