Patent ID: 7161909

Claim:
A method of acknowledging the receipt of a transmitted data stream in a wireless local area network (WLAN), the method comprising: transmitting a plurality of packets from a transmitting entity to a receiving entity, each packet being fragmented into a plurality of fragment packets, wherein the plurality of fragment packets form a sequence having a sequence number and each of the plurality of fragment packets has a fragment number, wherein the fragment numbers are sequentially numbered but the sequence number remains the same and wherein the fragment packets are transmitted in the order of the fragment numbers; determining whether the last fragment packet of the sequence is received in the receiving entity; and sending an acknowledgement packet from the receiving entity to the transmitting entity only after it has been determined that the last fragment packet has been received by the receiving entity, wherein each of the fragment packets includes a frame control section and a sequence control section, and wherein the determining comprises checking a more fragments field of the frame control section and checking a fragment number field and a sequence number field of the sequence control section so as to determine whether the last fragment packet of the sequence has been received.