METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR DISCARDING PACKETS IN A DATA NETWORK HAVING AUTOMATIC REPEAT REQUEST

摘要

Techniques are provided for use with automatic repeat request (ARQ) schemes in a data network to minimize a bandwidth used by a receiver and a transmitter in the network to transfer data packets, by discarding outdated packets that ha ve not yet been successfully transferred. In accordance with an embodiment of t he invention, a bit in set in the ARQ packet header to force the receiver to accept packets subsequent to one or more erroneous or unreceived packets tha t have been discarded and not resent. In accordance with another embodiment of the invention, after data packets have been discarded, sequence numbers are reassigned to the non-discarded data packets that are yet to be sent to the receiver, so that a transmitted stream of the non-discarded packets will hav e consecutive sequence numbers.