Patent ID: 8639834

Claim:
A method for self-adjusting application heartbeat management, the method comprising: a first data processing system receiving, at a first application executing in the first data processing system, from a second application executing in a second data processing system, a response message in response to a heartbeat message; the first data processing system identifying information in the response message usable for computing a delay in responding to a future heartbeat message with a future response message, the information communicating to the first application a system condition existing in the second data processing system, wherein the information is contained in an option in a header in the response message, wherein the option includes a code indicating a manner of using the information, wherein the heartbeat message is a Transmission control protocol (TCP) message sent from the first application to the second application, wherein the response message is a second TCP message sent from the second application to the first application, and wherein the option includes one of (i) a kind code that describes a type of the information and that is not reserved in a specification of the response message, and (ii) a kind code that describes a type of the information and that is reserved in a specification of the response message but is repurposed to indicate the type of the information; the first data processing system adjusting a response time using the information to form a modified response time; and the first data processing system receiving the future response message after the response time.