Strategy proposal:

• netty delivers message to connectionConductor (e.g.: onPacketInMessage())
• put message into per-connection-queue (Queue.offer())
• if queue is full then
• store the message into local slot
• invoke stopReading() on corresponding channel (still in netty thread)
• and return Future<Void> with having value set only after 50% of queue is free
• hook up a listener on this future which once the future value is set:
• turns on channel reading
• and enqueues the message in local slot into queue
• return thread to OFJava/Netty (expect no more messages will arrive)
• else return thread in order to deliver next message

QueueKeeper's push method wont be accessed by Netty's thread in ConnectionConductor.on* methods but queueKeeper will sequentially poll each per-connection-queue taking one item per turn using it's own thread. This way flooding by one device or connection is suppressed and all messages are enqueued fair.