Patent ID: 7200111

Claim:
A method for differentiating congestion-related packet loss versus random packet loss in a wireless data connection, comprising: monitoring changes in the length of a transmission queue in a wireless data connection; designating packet loss as being due to congestion if said packet loss is preceded by an increase in the queue length; designating packet loss as random loss if said packet loss is not preceded by an increase in the queue length; monitoring changes in the length of said queue over an interval substantially equal to the amount of time it takes to transmit a window of data packets and receive acknowledgements corresponding to all data packets transmitted in the window; initializing a state count to zero; transitioning from the state count zero to state count one if the length of said queue increases during the next interval; transitioning from the state count one to state count zero if the length of said queue decreases or remains steady during the next subsequent interval; transitioning from state count one to state count two if the length of said queue increases during the next subsequent interval; and designating packet loss as due to congestion if state count two is reached.