Patent ID: 7609640

Claim:
A method for avoiding slow-start restart in network communications, the method comprising: establishing a connection between a sender and a receiver; establishing a congestion window at the sender upon establishing the connection, wherein the congestion window defines a maximum amount of data that is transmittable by the sender prior to receipt of an acknowledgement to previously transmitted data from the receiver; setting an idle counter at the sender that measures an interval between a current time and a time of a last communication with the receiver; transmitting, from the sender to the receiver, a probe packet; receiving, from the receiver at the sender, upon receipt of the probe packet, an acknowledgement; expanding the congestion window upon receipt of the acknowledgement to the probe packet and prior to receipt of an acknowledgement to previously transmitted data from the receiver to allow for a greater amount of data to be transmitted; and resetting the idle counter to avoid occurrence of the slow-start restart in the communication upon receipt of the acknowledgement.