Patent ID: 7609697

Claim:
An apparatus for performing a Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) data packet transfers over an IEEE 802.11 network, comprising: a network interface configured according to IEEE 802.11 for communication over a network according to a TCP/IP layered communication protocol; a media access communication (MAC) layer within said network interface; and wherein an IP data packet structure is used within an IEEE 802.11 data packet frame of a media access communication (MAC) layer; wherein said IEEE 802.11 data packet frame is larger than said IP data packet structure which leaves additional bytes within the IEEE802.11 data packet frame, which is formatted into multiple blocks; means for optimizing data transfers as controlled from within said MAC layer by formatting network packets for Internet Protocol (IP) transmission and then using said additional bytes for IEEE 802.11 transmission of Forward Error Correction (FEC) and checksums, and for retransmitting blocks when performing partial packet retransmissions in response to receiving a partial ACK which contains information on error blocks from a receiver.