A system and method for managing connections between a server and a
plurality of clients at a network connection management device is
provided. The method comprises maintaining at least one connection to the
server, receiving requests from the clients, transmitting the requests to
the server, receiving responses to the requests from the server, and
monitoring a server response time for a selected request sent to the
server, the server response time for the selected request being the time
elapsed between transmitting the selected request to the server and
receiving a corresponding response from the server. A method according to
the present invention may also include basing the number of connections
to the server on the server response time.