Patent ID: 8018929

Claim:
In a computer server, a method of operation by a communication protocol service, comprising: receiving at the computer server a first connection pool creation request from a first application server executing on the computer server to allocate and initialize a first connection pool for subsequent allocation and creation of a first plurality of grouped client connections in the first connection pool for the first application server to communicate with clients of the first application server, wherein the first connection pool creation request specifies a buffer pool size, and wherein the first plurality of grouped client connections belongs to a first connection group in the first connection pool, and wherein the first plurality of grouped client connections share a common port to the computer server, and wherein the clients are physically distinct from the computer server and configured to communicate with the computer server via a communication network; and in response to receiving the first connection pool creation request, allocating and initializing the first connection pool, including allocating and initializing a first shared receive packet buffer of the first connection pool with the buffer size specified in the received first connection pool creation request, the first shared receive packet buffer for buffering received packets of the first plurality of grouped client connections at the computer server in a shared manner, and wherein the first shared receive packet buffer is located in the computer server, wherein when a packet associated with an out of group client is received at the computer server, the packet is excluded from the first shared receive packet buffer, the out of group client communicating with the first application server through the packet, and the out of group client not being one of the first plurality of grouped client connections; allocating and initializing a transmit packet buffer for buffering transmit packets of individual connections in the first connection pool and other transmit packets of other individual connections in at least one other connection pool; and throttling packet transmissions from the clients of the first application server when an amount of free buffering space of one or both of the receive packet buffer or the transmit packet buffer has been reduced below a predetermined threshold, wherein the throttling comprises withholding acknowledgment of at least one individual received packet and hiding, the at least one individual received packet from the first application server.