the adaptive bandwidth throttling system implements a graceful diminution of services to the clients by delaying a first class of services provided by a network server in response to the effective bandwidth utilized by this network server exceeding a first threshold . if the demand for the bandwidth by this network server exceeds a second threshold , the bandwidth throttling system escalates the throttling response and blocks the first class of services from execution and can also concurrently delay execution of a second class of services . the implementation of the throttling process can be varied , to include additional levels of response or finer gradations of the response , to include subsets of a class of services . in addition , the threshold levels of bandwidth used to trigger the throttling response can be selected as desired by the system administrator .