Patent ID: 7203162

Claim:
A method of implementing a reliable flooding mechanism in a network, wherein retransmission by flooding of certain communications occur if said communications are not acknowledged within a given time, said method comprising the steps of: assigning a given value for a current retransmission timer on a per neighbor basis to nodes transmitting said certain communications; transmitting initially said certain communications to said neighbors or retransmitting a number of said communications upon expiration of said current retransmission timer; waiting a given time for acknowledgement by specific neighbors to which said certain communications were transmitted; altering, if necessary, said current retransmission timer after receiving said acknowledgement of said certain communications from said specific neighbors to more accurately reflect a specific acknowledgement cycle time in said network, said altered current transmission timer being utilized in a next transmission of corresponding certain communications, wherein a network protocol corresponding to said certain communications is selected from the group consisting of OSPF, PNNI and ISIS.