Patent ID: 8478811

Claim:
A machine-implemented method, comprising: in at least one processor that comprises one or more threads of execution: identifying a plurality of agents among several agents that are coupled to a messaging network; allocating, for each of the identified plurality of agents, a reserved credit within a receive queue that can only be used for messages received from the corresponding agent of the identified plurality of agents, the reserved credit including one or more entries in the receive queue; decrementing a first credit of a first agent in response to a message sent by the first agent to a second agent, the identified plurality of agents including the first and second agents; and incrementing one of the first credit or a second credit of the first agent by a credit amount in response to a signal that is sent from the second agent, in which the credit amount is determined based at least in part upon the signal, which corresponds to a location at which the message is stored on the second agent, and the credit amount of the first agent varies based at least in part upon a respective size of each of a plurality of messages sent from the first agent.