Patent ID: 7970928

Claim:
A method of communicating discovery information to a first peer device in a network, the method comprising the steps of: receiving a marked SYN packet used in a TCP three-way handshake, the marked SYN packet having a TCP receive window size that is set to a known arbitrary value, the marked SYN packet being generated by the first peer device; piggybacking discovering information in a SACK option in a SYN/ACK packet used in the TCP three-way handshake to include discovery information for a second peer device; sending the SYN/ACK packet with the piggybacked discovery information in the TCP option to the first peer device; receiving an ACK packet from the first peer device to complete the three-way handshake, the ACK packet being used to reset the TCP receive window size to an original value; and receiving discovery information from the first peer device, the discovery information being included in a SACK option in the ACK packet.