Patent ID: 8031734

Claim:
A method for Ack packet promotion, comprising: receiving at a processing device a new Ack packet; generating a stream identifier associated with the new Ack packet, wherein the stream identifier is a function of a modified version of the TCP checksum field and a source port number from a TCP header; searching through a transmit queue for an old Ack packet having a stream identifier that corresponds to the stream identifier of the new Ack packet, and replacing the data in only one or more of a number field, a checksum field, a window size field, and a timestamp options field of the old Ack packet with corresponding data in a number field, a checksum field, a window size field, and a timestamp options field of the new Ack packet in response to said searching identifying an old Ack packet having a stream identifier that corresponds to the stream identifier of the new Ack packet.