Patent ID: 7178051

Claim:
A method for providing fault-tolerant and adaptive communication in a distributed computing environment, comprising: detecting an interruption in a digital connection on a network between two endpoints, the digital connection being utilized to transmit data elements of a transaction sequentially from an opposite endpoint to an application running at one end point; obtaining a connection state value indicating a number of data elements processed by the application; establishing a control connection on the network between the two endpoints upon the interruption in the digital connection; exchanging the connection state value with the opposite endpoint using the control connection on the network; detecting a 2 nd communication channel, the 2 nd communication channel providing an alternate option of communication between the two endpoints that is different from a current 1 st communication channel; and receiving remaining data elements of the transaction sequentially over the network from the opposite endpoint, wherein the remaining data elements begin with a data element at a point indicated by the connection state value plus one.