Patent ID: 7796579

Claim:
A method for relaying data packets by an intermediate network node, the data packets being transported via a Stream Control Transmission Protocol, SCTP, in which an association containing one or more streams transporting data packets with sequence numbers is established between two network components, the method comprising the steps of: receiving, at a first SCTP endpoint in a SCTP unit, the data packets with individual sequence numbers from a plurality of inbound streams; forwarding, by the first SCTP endpoint to a user layer without sorting, each of the data packets; selecting, by the user layer, an outbound stream for each of the data packets; and sending, by the user layer to a second SCTP endpoint in the SCTP unit, the data packets for relaying via the selected outbound streams, each of the relayed data packets having a sequence number that preserves the data packet order determined by its original sequence number; and sending the relayed data packets to a destination endpoint, where the destination endpoint has a sorting layer interposed between a SCTP Unit and a user layer, where the sorting layer sorts each of the relayed data packets within a particular source and destination combination based on sequence number prior to receipt of the relayed data packets by the user layer.