Patent ID: 7657618

Claim:
A network device for managing multiple back-end network connections, comprising: a transceiver for receiving requests and responses and sending information for throttling replies from a plurality of server connections to a client; and a management system that performs actions using the transceiver, including: receiving a set of pipelined ordered requests from the client, each request having a corresponding expected response; dispatching the ordered requests to a plurality of servers wherein each request dispatched to a server corresponds to a server connection; serially throttling each server connection corresponding to an expected response, based on the ordering of the outstanding ordered requests, to delay receipt of a response from a server other than the current expected response from the server corresponding to a current ordered request such that buffering at the network device of responses other than the current expected response is eliminated, wherein throttling a server connection comprises delaying receipt of a reply on the server connection; and based on receiving a current expected response to the current ordered request, un-throttling the next server connection corresponding to the next ordered request, wherein said next ordered request becomes the current request.