------------------------------------------------------------------------------- United States Patent 5,446,737 Cidon, et. al. Aug. 29, 1995 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Method and apparatus for dynamically allocating shared resource access quota Inventors: Cidon; Israel (Bronx, NY); Georgiadis; Leonidas (Chappaqua, NY); Guerin; Roch A. (Yorktown Heights, NY); Shavitt; Yuval Y. (Technion City, ILX); Slater; Andrew E. (Yorktown Heights, NY). Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation (Armonk, NY). Appl. No.: 192,464 Filed: Feb. 7, 1994 Intl. Cl.: H04J 3/16; U.S. Cl.: 370/85.5; 370/85.15; Field of 79;84;85.8;95.2;95.3;85.6;94.1;85.1;85.9;85.11;85.12;85.15;85.5 Search: ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- References Cited ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- U.S. Patent Documents 4,926,418 May, 1990 Cidon et al. 370/ 85 .5 4,977,557 Dec., 1990 Phung et al. 370/ 85 .6 5,001,707 Mar., 1991 Kositpaiboon et al. 370/ 94 .1 5,072,443 Dec., 1991 Hahne et al. 370/ 85 .9 5,111,456 May, 1992 Limb 370/ 85 .9 5,124,981 Jun., 1992 Golding 370/ 85 .9 5,128,937 Jul., 1992 Khalil 370/ 85 .9 Primary Examiner: Olms; Douglas W. Assistant Examiner: Patel; Ajit ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Abstract ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A counter for tracking current shared resource access quota requests of nodes in a multi-node system is circulated among the nodes. A quota for a given node is determined as a function of the counter, the needs of the given node and a variable indicative of total access quota for all nodes combined. The determined quota is then allocated to the given node, i.e., the node is allowed to access the shared resource in accordance with the determined quota. 35 Claims, 4 Drawing Figures -------------------------------------------------------------------------------