Patent ID: 8521887

Claim:
A system comprising: a memory area for storing a timer value, a maximum interval duration, and a tolerance factor for each of a plurality of open transmission control protocol (TCP) connections, said tolerance factor indicating early availability of the associated TCP connection for maintenance operations; and a processor associated with a computing device, said processor configured to execute computer-executable instructions for: receiving the maximum interval duration and the tolerance factor for each of the TCP connections; storing the received maximum interval duration and the received tolerance factor in the memory area; adjusting the timer value for each of the TCP connections as a function of an elapsed time since activity on the TCP connection; receiving notification of an event at a notification time; identifying, in response to the received notification, one or more of the TCP connections to which the received notification applies and for which a difference between the timer value and the maximum interval duration is within the tolerance factor to aggregate the maintenance operations of the identified TCP connections; and sending a keep-alive packet over each of the identified TCP connections.