Patent ID: 7916646

Claim:
A method for handling an overload condition in a communication network, comprising: calculating a call target rate by a core signaling network element; and using the call target rate by the core signaling network element to start throttling signaling traffic if a total queueing delay of the core signaling network element exceeds a predefined high threshold in a measurement interval, wherein the call target rate is calculated by dividing a message target rate, λ t , by an estimated messages per call parameter, r t , to obtain the call target rate, λ t /r t , wherein the message target rate, λ t , is defined as λ t =μ t *(1−(d t −d e )/C), where d e is a target queueing delay parameter, C is a control interval duration, μ t is a message service rate, and d t is a total queueing delay.