Patent ID: 7404205

Claim:
A method for controlling connections from an IP entity, having a source IP address, to a server comprising the steps of: configuring a limit count representing a number of concurrently allowable connections between the IP entity and the server; receiving an incoming IP packet; processing the packet to determine said source IP address and a destination IP address for the packet; creating an entry in a limit table for the IP entity, if no entry for that IP entity exists in the table, wherein the entry is identified by said source IP address and destination IP address; determining, by reference to the limit count and the entry in the limit table, whether a pending connection should be allowed for the packet; allowing the connection, and incrementing the limit count for the entry if the attempted connection would not exceed the limit count for the IP entity; and blocking the packet if the attempted connection would exceed the limit count for the IP entity; wherein each pending packet that exceeds the limit count is considered to be an over-limit connection, for which indicia of the pending packet is stored in a logging record in a logging file when there are no more active connections associated with the IP entity; generating a summary logging record indicating a total of the number of connection attempts, by said IP entity, that exceed said limit count; writing each said summary logging record to a summary logging file; and collating the summary logging records in the summary logging file.