Patent ID: 8520529

Claim:
A unit, comprising: a receiver to receive packets from a network; input logic to assign sequential sequence numbers to the received packets, determine whether or not each received packet will be reordered, wherein reordered packets are retransmitted after one or more subsequently received packet, when the received packet is not to be reordered, store the received packet in a normal traffic first-in first-out (FIFO) queue and store the assigned sequence number as metadata associated with the received packet, and when the received packet is to be reordered, store the received packet in a reorder traffic FIFO queue, modify the assigned sequence number to equal the anticipated sequence number of a subsequently-received packet to be transmitted immediately after the reordered received packet, and store the modified sequence number as metadata associated with the received packet; output logic to read a first sequence number associated with a packet at a head end of the normal traffic FIFO queue and a second sequence number associated with a packet at a head end of the reorder traffic FIFO queue, and select one of the packet at the head end of the normal traffic FIFO queue and the packet at the head end of the reorder traffic FIFO queue based on the respective sequence numbers; and a transmitter to transmit the packet selected by the output logic to the network.