Patent ID: 7487242

Claim:
A data processing system for handling requests, the data processing system comprising: a bus system; a memory connected to the bus system, wherein the memory includes a set of instructions; a communications adapter connected to the bus system; a processing unit connected to the bus system, wherein the processing unit executes the set of instructions to provide a plurality of processes to handle the requests, wherein each of the plurality of processes is assigned a subset of foreign ports within a plurality of foreign ports, wherein each of the foreign ports is an identifier used to identify a remote process on a remote machine that originated a given request; identify a foreign port in a request in response to receiving the request; send the request to a process assigned to the subset of foreign ports having a match to the foreign port in the request, wherein the process handles the request; calculate a network load; add processes to the plurality of processes if the network load has increased beyond a first selected threshold; and remove processes from the plurality of processes if the network load has decreased more than a second selected threshold.