Patent ID: 7489637

Claim:
A method of improving the flow of data in a communication system having at least two links that connect units, at least one link having multiple simultaneous connections, said method comprising; splitting at least one of said links into segments; and inserting into said at least one of said links at least one enhancer; wherein, said enhancer a) communicates with a unit upstream of the data flow such that the upstream unit perceives that it is communicating with at least one unit downstream of the enhancer; b) assessing an aggregate amount of unacknowledged data sent via the link having multiple simultaneous connections, the aggregate amount including data sent via each of the simultaneous connections, and obtaining a measure of efficacy of operation of the at least one downstream unit using the assessment of the aggregate amount of unacknowledged data; and c) dependent upon the measure, varies control of data flow sent to downstream units, by not sending data via a particular connection if the amount of unacknowledged data sent via that particular connection exceeds a first predetermined amount and the amount of said aggregate data exceeds a second predetermined amount; and wherein, the at least one downstream unit operates according to a standard TCP/IP protocol stack, without modification to accommodate insertion of the enhancer, and the aggregate amount of unacknowledged data is determined based on data from the standard unmodified protocol stack.