Patent ID: 8824296

Claim:
A method in an element having a queue used to store messages sent from a message sender to a message receiver, of handling congestion in the queue without discarding a new message from the message sender, said method comprising: receiving the new message, of a given message type, which is to be added to the queue; determining whether congestion handling is to be performed; in response to determining congestion handling is to be performed, identifying one or more older messages in the queue that has a same message type as the given message type of the new message; performing the congestion handling by: removing the identified one or more older messages, of the given message type, from the queue; and assimilating contents of the identified one or more older messages into the new message so that the contents of the identified one or more older messages are not lost, without assimilating entire message of the identified one or more older messages into the new message; and adding the new message that includes contents of the identified one or more older messages to the queue.