Techniques for managing message transmission in a large networked computer system that includes multiple individual networked computing systems are disclosed. Message passing among the computing systems include a sending computing device transmitting a message to a receiver computing device and a receiver computing device consuming that message. A build-up of data stored in a buffer at the receiver can reduce performance. In order to reduce the potential performance degradation associated with large amounts of “waiting” data in the buffer, a sending computer system first determines whether the receiver computer system is ready to receive a message and does not transmit the message if the receiver computer system is not ready. To determine whether the receiver computer system is ready to receive a message, the receiver computer system, at the request of the sending computer system, checks a counting filter that stores indications of whether particular messages are ready.