Abstract: A certain number of agents and tokens are created. A first agent that is assigned a request must obtain a token to process the request. The number of agents which may concurrently process requests are limited by preventing an agent from processing a request unless the agent has an assigned token. An additional agent is created after assigning the token to the first agent, provided that an existing agent is not available to wait for a request, and an unassigned token is available for the additional agent. A certain minimum number of agents is defined and an agent is automatically eliminated when the agent completes a request, provided that the number of agents that are assigned tokens exceeds the minimum number of agents.