Patent ID: 7203167

Claim:
A method of controlling the flow of an amount of data from a sending peer to a receiving peer of a predetermined communication protocol, comprising: dividing said amount of data into a plurality of data segments, said data segments being ordered in a sequence, transmitting said data segments from said sending peer to said receiving peer in the order of said sequence, determining at said receiving peer if a data segment was received correctly, and if a correctly received data segment is in the proper order of said sequence, sending acknowledgment messages from said receiving peer to said sending peer, where an acknowledgment message indicates the correct receipt of a data segment and identifies the last correctly received data segment of said sequence that was received in the proper order of said sequence, and if the sending peer receives a threshold number of duplicate acknowledgement messages that each identify the same one data segment as the last correctly received data segment of said sequence that was received in the proper order of said sequence, retransmitting the segment that immediately follows said one data segment, where said method comprises a threshold number adaptation procedure performed by the sending peer for dynamically adapting said threshold number, where the current value of the duplicate acknowledgement threshold is determined on the basis of measurements made with respect to the characteristics of the connection between the sending peer and the receiving peer and where said threshold number adaptation procedure is arranged such that said threshold number may assume values larger than three.