Yes, the client is on the same machine as JBoss. Actually, the web application is accessed as a web service (using Axis1.4), and the client invokes the readMessages service to get the messages from the queue. I looked back at the code of the web application, and I noticed something poorly coded that could explain the issue: each time the readMessages service is invoked, a JMS consumer is created by calling the queueSession.createReceiver method! As the client perpetually invokes the readMessages service, I think the creation of consumer instances is overloaded and fails. I changed the code to create only one instance of consumer (when the readMessages service is invoked for the first time by this specific client): it seems that the client can access the 10,000 messages now! Thanks for your help! But thinking further about the issue, I would like to know if this behavior is a JBoss Messaging limitation or an environment configuration problem: what if 20 or so clients simultaneously invoke the readMessages service? Will the consumer instance creation be overloaded too? View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=3983842#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...