Patent ID: 8190948

Claim:
A method of maintaining an ordering of transmitted data, comprising: associating a sequence number with each element of a plurality of elements of the transmitted data, wherein the sequence number of each element of the plurality of elements indicates a temporal relationship between different ones of the plurality of elements; maintaining a last aborted sequence number and an indicator of whether receipt of information indicating that the last aborted sequence number has been acknowledged; and rejecting data associated with a sequence number indicative of a time before a time corresponding to the last aborted sequence number, wherein a sender sends the last aborted sequence number to a receiver that acknowledges receipt thereof, wherein the sender and the receiver each maintain a value for the last aborted sequence number and wherein the receiver returns the last aborted sequence number to the sender in connection with rejecting data provided thereto, and wherein each of the sender and the receiver set the last aborted sequence number of each to zero in response to a difference between the sequence number of at least one of the plurality of elements and the last aborted sequence number being greater than a value representing an expected latency of a network interposed between the sender and the receiver.