Patent ID: 7639628

Claim:
A method comprising: providing an apparatus within a gateway of a network to maintain at least two counts that each have an initial value of zero; activating and deactivating the counts between an active state and not an active state such that no more than one count at a time is in an active state; receiving, at a gateway, a request packet of information that requires a reply; setting, by the gateway, a flag in the request packet of information that requires a reply, the flag being set to correspond to the count that is in the active state; incrementing, by the gateway, the count that is currently in the active state; receiving, at the gateway, a reply packet of information corresponding to a previously received request packet of information that required a reply, the reply packet of information having a flag setting corresponding to a flag setting of the previously received request packet of information that required a reply; and decrementing, by the gateway, one of the at least two counts that corresponds to the flag setting of the reply packet of information regardless of which count is currently in the active state.