Importance

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Abstract

A method of communicating over a satellite or other high delay-bandwidth link comprises receiving, at a source or client gateway, incoming packets directed to a destination address, in a first protocol, preferably transmission control protocol (TCP) over Internet protocol (IP), or TCP/IP. The destination address is modified by replacing the destination address in a received packet with an address of the source gateway application so that the packets are forwarded to the source gateway application. Packets are forwarded from the source gateway application in a second protocol over the link to a destination gateway application. The original destination address is restored at the destination gateway application and the packets are forwarded to the destination address in the first protocol. Packets may be transmitted or forwarded over the link by first fragmenting them into smaller packets, and are reconstructed at the other end of the link. Preferably, in the second protocol, upon an automatic repeat request (ARQ) from the destination gateway application, only packets which are incorrectly received by the destination gateway application are retransmitted from the source gateway application. The packets may arrive at the destination gateway application in scrambled order, and thus are reordered, in the destination gateway application, into their original order. To reduce acknowledgment traffic, acknowledgments are sent over the high delay-bandwidth link only periodically. Only a list containing the first sequence number and the last sequence number of a series of contiguously received packets is sent back to the source gateway application.

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First Claim