Patent ID: 7039715

Claim:
In a communications environment with a receiver computing device receiving a plurality of incoming communications flows over a common communications link, a method for allocating incoming bandwidth of the common communications link among the plurality of incoming communications flows, the method comprising: assigning a priority to each incoming communications flow; deciding whether to re-allocate the incoming bandwidth of the common communications link among the incoming communications flows; and if a decision is made to re-allocate the incoming bandwidth, then: selecting an incoming communications flow with an assigned priority lower than the assigned priority of another incoming communications flow; and increasing an average response time for messages received over the selected incoming communications flow, wherein increasing an average response time for messages received over the selected incoming communications flow comprises utilizing a method selected from the group consisting of: delaying presentation of messages received over the selected incoming communications flow to an application associated with the selected incoming communications flow, delaying transmission of message acknowledgements over an outgoing communications flow associated with the selected incoming communications flow, and decreasing a size of a receiver buffer pool associated with the selected incoming communications flow.