referring to fig1 , there is shown a simplified ethernet lan 100 , wherein data processing systems 102 – 106 , such as computers or the like , respectively comprise three of the network nodes . device 108 , such as a printer or the like , comprises a fourth node and respective nodes are interconnected to one other by means of a network transmission path or channel 110 . path 110 comprises an ethernet transmission medium , such as a conductive cable or a wireless transmission path . packets of varying length that convey information , including interrupt request message signals , are routed from one node to another by means of transmission path 110 . data processing system 100 is configured to implement an embodiment of the invention , when packets containing interrupt messages are coupled thereto . referring to fig2 , there is shown a simplified block diagram of data processing system 102 . system 102 is provided with a lan adapter 200 , comprising a network interface card ( nic ) that is connected to receive data and instruction information from , and to transmit information into , the ethernet transmission path 110 . adapter 200 is configured to implement embodiments of the invention , as described hereinafter . thus , adapter 200 is disposed to receive incoming external requests to interrupt processor 202 as it is carrying out successive assigned tasks , generally associated with operation of data processing system 102 . data processing system 102 employs a peripheral component interconnect ( pci ) local bus architecture . although the depicted example employs a pci bus , other bus architectures such as accelerated graphics port ( agp ) and industry standard architecture ( isa ) may be used . processor 202 and main memory 204 are connected to pci local bus 206 through pci bridge 208 . pci bridge 208 also may include an integrated memory controller and cache memory for processor 202 . additional connections to pci local bus 206 may be made through direct component interconnection or through add - in connectors . in contrast , audio adapter 212 , graphics adapter 214 , and audio / video adapter 218 are connected to pci local bus 206 by add - in boards inserted into expansion slots . an operating system runs on processor 202 and is used to coordinate and provide control of various components within data processing system 102 in fig2 . the operating system may be a commercially available operating system such as windows xp , which is available from microsoft corporation . an object oriented programming system such as java may run in conjunction with the operating system and provides calls to the operating system from java programs or applications executing on data processing system 102 . “ java ” is a trademark of sun microsystems , inc . instructions for the operating system , the object - oriented programming system may be loaded into main memory 204 for execution by processor 202 . those of ordinary skill in the art will appreciate that the hardware in fig2 may vary depending on the implementation . other internal hardware or peripheral devices , such as flash read - only memory ( rom ), equivalent nonvolatile memory , or optical disk drives and the like , may be used in addition to or in place of the hardware depicted in fig2 . also , the processes of the present invention may be applied to a multiprocessor data processing system . referring to fig3 , there is shown lan adapter or nic 200 provided with a processor 302 , memory 304 and a storage device 306 , respectively connected to a bus 308 . bus 308 is disposed to receive packets that are incoming to data processing system 102 from ethernet transmission path 110 , and is further disposed to provide data and other information to bus 206 of system 102 . thus , adapter 200 receives the interrupt request packets referred to above in connection with fig2 . components 302 – 306 may be readily configured to collectively interact with one other , in order to implement embodiments of the invention described hereinafter . a firmware delay loop 310 , as currently used in conventional interrupt coalescing applications , is also coupled to bus 308 . other conventional nic components well known to those skilled in the art are not shown in fig3 , in order to simplify illustration of embodiments of the invention . in a first embodiment of the invention , the length of a locking packet , which typically may be on the order of less than 100 bytes , is stored in memory device 304 or otherwise entered into adapter 200 . thereafter , each time an incoming packet containing an interrupt signal is received by adapter 200 , respective components thereof cooperatively interact to determine whether the size of the incoming packet is equal to or less than the stored locking packet length . if the size of the incoming packet is equal to or less than such stored length , adapter 200 reads the packet header , to determine whether or not the packet is a broadcast message . if the incoming packet is found not to comprise a broadcast message , the packet is considered to be a locking packet . thereupon , adapter 200 signals the data processing system 110 to interrupt the processor 202 immediately . as stated above , a locking packet contains a message instructing the data processing system to receive data that immediately follows the locking packet without delay . it is thus seen that the above embodiment specifies two criteria that must both be met , in order to interrupt the processor immediately , namely ( 1 ) the incoming packet size must be no greater than the prespecified size of a known locking packet , and ( 2 ) the incoming packet must not be a broadcast message packet . a broadcast packet should not be used to generate an immediate interrupt , since such packets occur frequently on an ethernet network , and tend to generate false positives in analyzing the comparative urgency of interrupt messages . a further criterion could be that the packet contains a non - zero payload size . in the above embodiment of the invention , if one or both of the stated criteria are not met , the adapter 200 will process the incoming packet in accordance with an interrupt coalescing technique , whereby the interrupt message of the packet will be delayed . usefully , adapter 200 implements a conventional coalescing technique of a type described above . in accordance therewith , an interrupt of processor 202 will not occur until ( 1 ) a prespecified total number of packets have been received by the adapter ; ( 2 ) a prespecified total number of bytes have been received ; ( 3 ) a prespecified time period has expired ; or ( 4 ) a prespecified number of packets have been received , in combination with expiration of a prespecified time period . the firmware delay loop 310 of adapter 200 could be used in implementing one or the other of these techniques . alternatively , a time counter ( not shown ) could be substituted for delay loop 310 . it is anticipated that other interrupt coalescing techniques occurring to those of skill in the art could also be used . in a further embodiment of the invention , packet points pt are computed as a function of the actual size sact of a packet containing an interrupt message that is received by adapter 200 . if s max and s min are the maximum and the minimum sizes , respectively , of incoming packets that can be received by adapter 200 from transmission path 110 , and if b v is a preselected base value , the packet point value p pt for an incoming packet is computed from the following relationship : p pt =( s max − s min + b v )/( s max − s min ) eqn . ( 1 ) in this embodiment of the invention , a packet point criterion value c v is selected . the criterion value 1 . 0 has been found to be particularly useful , but other criterion values could be used as well . each time an interrupt packet is received by adapter 200 , adapter 200 computes the point value ppt therefore , from equation ( 1 ). adapter 200 then adds the computed value to the cumulative sum of the packet points of all previous interrupt packets received by adapter 200 , since the last processor interrupt occurred . fig3 shows a counter 312 that may be used to keep track of this cumulative sum . when the cumulative packet point sum exceeds the criterion value c v , a processor interrupt will occur . the counter 312 will thereupon also be cleared . to illustrate this embodiment of the invention , base value b v is selected to be 140 , s max is 1500 bytes and s min is 100 bytes . each of these values is initially entered into adapter 200 . upon receiving a small packet having a size of 100 bytes , adapter 200 computes the packet point value p pt therefore , from equation ( 1 ): it will be readily apparent that the point value of 1 . 1 exceeds the criterion point value of point 1 . 0 . accordingly , the processor 202 of data processing system 102 will be interrupted immediately , upon receipt of the small packet . on the other hand , if a large incoming packet of 1500 bytes is received by adapter 200 , the following packet point value will result : thus , when large packets are received , interrupt coalescing occurs so that ten ( 10 ) successive large packets will need to be received , in order for the cumulative packet point sum to reach 1 . 0 , and thus generate a processor interrupt . it is to be understood that the number of packets required to generate a packet interrupt can be selectively varied by varying the base value b v . reducing the base value increases the number of packets needed to generate an interrupt , as illustrated by the following , wherein the base value is 99 : if each large packet produces a packet point value of 0 . 07 , fourteen ( 14 ) packets must be received by adapter 200 before the processor interrupt is generated . however , a small 100 byte packet will produce 1 . 07 points , so that the processor will be interrupted immediately , in response thereto . increasing the base value decreases the number of packets needed to generate an interrupt , as illustrated by the following , wherein the base value is 650 : if each large packet produces a point value of 0 . 46 , three ( 3 ) packets must be received by adapter 200 before the processor interrupt is generated . a small 100 byte packet will produce 1 . 4 points , so that the processor will be interrupted immediately upon receiving the small packet . in further embodiments of the invention , minimum packet size s min could be 64 octets and maximum packet size could be 1518 octets . these sizes include all the frames apart from the preamble . because of the frame header fields , the crc and the overhead of the ip and tcp or udp higher layer protocols , the amount left for useful application data is less then 1518 . it is to be emphasized that the above values for s min and s max are representative values only , so that other values can be used for s min and s max as well . one could incorporate only the actual payload values , for example , excluding ethernet source and destination addresses . referring to fig4 , there is shown a flowchart setting forth principal steps of embodiments of the invention . after a packet carrying an interrupt message has been received by the data processing system , as indicated by function block 402 , an analysis must be made to determine whether the packet does or does not meet all criteria for a packet that is sufficiently small and significant to warrant an immediate interrupt . this is shown in fig4 by decision block 404 . if the packet does meet all criteria , the processor is immediately interrupted , in accordance with the interrupt message carried by the packet , as indicated by function block 406 . otherwise , an interrupt coalescing technique is applied to the packet , as indicated by function block 408 . function block 410 shows that after the event of either block 406 or 408 , the system prepares to receive the next incoming packet . while the above embodiments have been described with an ethernet lan network , it is to be understood that embodiments of the invention could readily be used in connection with a token ring network , as well as with other networks known to those of skill in the art . the description of the present invention has been presented for purposes of illustration and description , and is not intended to be exhaustive or limited to the invention in the form disclosed . many modifications and variations will be apparent to those of ordinary skill in the art . the embodiment was chosen and described in order to best explain the principles of the invention , the practical application , and to enable others of ordinary skill in the art to understand the invention for various embodiments with various modifications as are suited to the particular use contemplated .