Fast Detection and Retransmission of Dropped Last Packet in a Flow

摘要

A network element processes a data flow in accordance with a communications protocol in which respective incremental sequence numbers are assigned to segments of the data flow. The segments are sent from the network element to the other network element in order of the sequence numbers, and respective acknowledgements are received from the other network element. The acknowledgements may include the highest sequence number of the segments of the flow that were received in the other network element. After transmitting the last segment of the data flow an additional segment is sent to the other network element. When it is determined from an acknowledgement of the additional segment that the last segment of the data flow was not received by the other network element, the last segment is retransmitted.