explanation fig5 is a chart of the messages required to make a non idempotent request where the request is a slow request a non idempotent request is made when a requesting computer system 10 sends a request message 130 to a serving computer system 20 in the cluster when the serving computer system 20 fails to respond to the request within the prescribed period of time the requesting computer system 10 retransmits the request as request message 131 the serving computer system 20 identifying the request as a retransmitted request then marks the request as a slow request and sends a slow request message 132 the slow response message 132 causes the requesting computer system to stop sending request messages for this request then after the serving computer system completes the necessary processing the serving computer system sends a response message 133 the serving computer system saves a copy of the response message 133 the requesting computer system 10 then acknowledges the receipt of the response message 133 marked as a slow request by sending an acknowledge message 134 after the acknowledge message 134 is received the serving computer system 20 discards its copy of the response message 133 since there is no guarantee that any message transmitted over the network will reach the intended computer system the method of the present invention must tolerate lost messages in the event the original request message is lost over the network the requesting computer system for both the idempotent and non idempotent requests will wait the prescribed period of time defined by the underlying network protocol and retransmit the request message and again wait for a response in the event a repeated request message is lost.