Patent ID: 7366096

Claim:
A method for determining network capacity and managing network congestion in response to a change in an end-to-end communication path between a sender host and a receiver host, the method comprising: receiving at the sender host a receiver mobility notification from the receiver host by receiving a mobility flag in a header field of segments sent from the receiver host to the sender host, wherein receiving a mobility flag comprises receiving a mobility bit having a first state indicating no movement from a first subnet to a second subnet and a second state indicating movement from the first subnet to the second subnet; determining at the sender host whether the receiver host has moved from a first subnet to a second subnet using the receiver mobility notification; and resetting a congestion state at the sender host to correspond to a new end-to-end communication path between the sender host and the receiver host in the second subnet, if the sender host determines that the receiver host has moved from the first subnet to the second subnet; and receiving the mobility bit in the first state if the receiver host further moves from the second subnet to one of a third subnet or the first subnet.