Patent ID: 8606753

Claim:
A method comprising: calculating a real-time deduplication rate for data blocks transferred between one or more backup clients and one or more backup servers via a network interface; disabling the sending of fingerprints from the one or more backup clients to the one or more backup servers if the sending is currently enabled and the deduplication rate is less than a first threshold, each of the fingerprints identifying a data block and for use in determining whether the data block associated with the fingerprint should be sent to the one or more backup servers via the network; and enabling the sending if the sending is currently disabled and the deduplication rate is greater than a second threshold, wherein the deduplication rate comprises a percentage of data blocks required for a backup operation that were not actually transferred from the one or more backup clients to the one or more backup servers via the network because one or more fingerprints indicated the one or more data blocks associated with the one or more fingerprints were previously transferred to the one or more backup servers.