Patent ID: 7031928

Claim:
A method for fairly servicing, by a request servicing device, electronic requests received by the request servicing device from request generating devices interconnected with the request receiving device, the method comprising: establishing a pricing tier for each request generating device, a maximum rate of request servicing, and an expected time for serving a request at the maximum rate of request servicing; for each request generating device with a premium pricing tier, maintaining an instantaneous rate of request servicing by the request servicing device; following servicing of each request from a request generating device by the request servicing device, determining a time elapsed during servicing of the request; when the time elapsed during servicing of the request is less than the expected time for serving a request established for the request generating device, calculating a remaining time equal to the difference between expected time for serving a request established for the request generating device and the time elapsed during servicing of the request; and waiting for a length of time based on the calculated remaining time prior to servicing another request for the request generating device.