Patent ID: 7706368

Claim:
A method for correlating messages defining a content delivery delivery transaction, the method being performed by a processor of a network element and comprising: receiving an incoming message having a received message identifier, the received message identifier including, in a single field, a unique transaction identifier suffixed by a message index value of the incoming message and within the content delivery transaction; extracting from said received message identifier the unique transaction identifier; checking whether said unique transaction identifier is known; if no: creating a transaction record for the unique transaction identifier; and determining whether to update the transaction record based on the message index value indicating at least one of a transaction type and that the incoming message is a first message in the content delivery transaction; processing the incoming message based on the transaction record; and associating subsequent messages of the content delivery transaction with subsequent message identifiers, the subsequent message identifiers including said unique transaction identifier suffixed by subsequent message index values, the subsequent message index values corresponding to message sequence numbers of the subsequent messages within said content delivery transaction.