The primary port 131A is the port through which the load balancer 120 communicates TCP requests to the server 130A. As discussed above, in one embodiment, if a particular TCP request has been rejected more than a threshold number of times from various servers in the pool 139, the load balancer 120 sends the TCP request to an alternate port, i.e., the secondary port 132A of a server 130A. In one embodiment, the TCP request sent to the secondary port receives priority treatment, such as being placed in another queue (not shown) that is processed ahead of the normal queue 134A, or being placed at the front of the normal queue 134A. In another embodiment, TCP requests received through the secondary port 132 are not rejected, regardless of how full the queue 134A is. In one implementation, the queue manager 133A holds the TCP request received through the secondary port 132A until a space opens in the queue 134A into which the TCP request can be placed. In another embodiment, requests sent to the secondary port are placed in a secondary queue that is equally treated by the server 130A. The presence of a request in the secondary queue is taken as a strong signal by the server 130A that additional processes are needed in order to accept more requests from the load balancer 120.