Abstract: In one embodiment, data communication apparatus includes a network interface including one or more ports for connection to a packet data network and configured to receive content transfer requests from at least one remote device over the network, a storage sub-system to be connected to local peripheral storage devices, and including at least one peripheral interface, and a memory sub-system including a cache and RAM, and processing circuitry to manage transfer of content between the remote device(s) and the local peripheral storage devices via the peripheral interface(s) and the cache, responsively to the content transfer requests, while pacing commencement of serving of respective ones of the content transfer requests responsively to a metric of the storage sub-system so that while ones of the content transfer requests are being served, other ones of the content transfer requests pending serving are queued in at least one pending queue.

Abstract: In one embodiment, data communication apparatus includes a network interface including one or more ports for connection to a packet data network and configured to receive content transfer requests from at least one remote device over the network, a storage sub-system to be connected to local peripheral storage devices, and including at least one peripheral interface, and a memory sub-system including a cache and RAM, and processing circuitry to manage transfer of content between the remote device(s) and the local peripheral storage devices via the peripheral interface(s) and the cache, responsively to the content transfer requests, while pacing commencement of serving of respective ones of the content transfer requests responsively to a metric of the storage sub-system so that while ones of the content transfer requests are being served, other ones of the content transfer requests pending serving are queued in at least one pending queue.