I have a web site that communicates via XMLRPC with an XMLRPC server web service. (The web service is written in Python using xmlrpclib.) I believe that xmlrpclib will block while it is handling one request.

So if there are three users with an xmlrpclib request ahead of you, your response takes four times as long.

How do I handle it if I receive too many XMLRPC requests and the web service gets bogged down and has slow response time?

If I am getting slashdotted, my preferred behavior is that the first users get good response times and everyone else is told to come back later. I think this is superior to giving everyone terrible response times.

How do I create this behavior? Is this called load-balancing? I am not actually balancing though, until I have multiple servers.