Patent ID: 7957323

Claim:
A method of evaluating sequence of a packet stream comprising a plurality of packets, wherein each of the plurality of packets has an assigned sequence number, the method comprising acts of: receiving a packet of the plurality of packets; determining the sequence number of the packet; comparing the sequence number of the packet to an expected sequence number indicative of the highest received sequence number in the packet stream; determining, based on the act of comparing, whether the sequence number of the packet is greater than or equal to the expected sequence number; when it is determined that the sequence number of the packet is greater than or equal to the expected sequence number, determining that the packet is an in-order packet; when it is determined that the packet is an in-order packet, incrementing a counter that counts the number of received in-order packets in the packet stream; when it is determined that the sequence number of the packet is not greater than or equal to the expected sequence number, determining whether the sequence number of the packet is greater than or equal to the expected sequence number minus a current sequence run length for the packet stream; and when it is determined that the sequence number of the packet is greater than or equal to the expected sequence number minus the current sequence run length for the packet stream, incrementing a counter that counts the number of received duplicate packets in the packet stream.