Patent ID: 7502860

Claim:
A method for providing reliable transport of data across a network between a server on a server device and a client on a client device requesting multiple packets of content from the server, the method comprising the steps of: receiving from the server device a connection identification that is a secret number generated by the server device and used by the server device to verify that a plurality of messages received by the server device is indeed from the client device; detecting, by the client device only, one or more network problems based on prior exchange of data packets between the server device and the client device; determining at the client device only, based on considerations of the network problems, a number of packets to be sent by the server device without an acknowledgement message from the client device; and sending to the server device a first data packet including a first field holding data indicating the number of packets to be sent by the server device without an acknowledgement message from the client device; wherein the first data packet is one of the plurality of messages that each carry the connection identification; wherein the connection identification is carried by each message in the plurality of messages in a separate field from a sequence identifier carried by the each message; and wherein the server device does not perform determining the number of packets to be sent by the server device without an acknowledgement message from the client device.