Patent ID: 7391784

Claim:
A method of communicating state information between a first entity and a second entity, the method comprising: (a) sending a first message containing state information from the first entity to the second entity, wherein the first message comprises a state of the first entity, a value indicating the first entity's current known state of the second entity, and a value indicating a current known state of the first entity that has been acknowledged as having been received by the second entity; (b) if after a first time interval, no confirmation message has been received by the first entity from the second entity, resending the first message from the first entity to the second entity; (c) repeating step (b) until the confirmation message has been received by the first entity from the second entity or until a second time interval expires, wherein the second time interval is at least equal to the first time interval; (d) if after the second time interval expires and no confirmation message has been received by the first entity from the second entity, resending the first message from the first entity to the second entity requiring the second entity to send the confirmation message; and (e) if during any of steps (a)-(d) a second message containing updated state information is available before the confirmation message has been received by the first entity, terminating the sending of the first message and sending the second message in accordance with steps (a)-(d).