Patent ID: 8432801

Claim:
A method for identifying ports to support data packet traffic between a source device and a destination device in a computer network, the method comprising: setting a set S D of destination ports located at the destination device; identifying a subset of ports S k D using ports from the set S D by repeating the sub-tasks of: choosing a port p from the set S D , the port p not being a member of the subset S k D ; determining whether the port p collides with ports from the subset S k D by transmitting pairs of packets to the destination device, each pair including a first packet transmitted to the port p and a second packet transmitted to one of the ports in the subset S k D , wherein a collision is found to exist when the packets from at least one of the pairs arrive at the destination device in order of transmission, and a collision is found not to exist when the packets from the at least one of the pairs arrive out of order; when it is determined that the port p does not collide with any of the ports in the subset S k D , adding the port p to the subset S k D ; and serving data traffic between the source device and the destination device by using the ports from the subset S k D .