(19)
(11) EP 1 251 661 A8

(12) CORRECTED EUROPEAN PATENT APPLICATION

(48) Corrigendum issued on:
02.04.2003 Bulletin 2003/14

(43) Date of publication:
23.10.2002 Bulletin 2002/43

(21) Application number: 01107783.1

(22) Date of filing: 04.04.2001
(51) International Patent Classification (IPC)7H04L 12/56
(84) Designated Contracting States:
AT BE CH CY DE DK ES FI FR GB GR IE IT LI LU MC NL PT SE TR
Designated Extension States:
AL LT LV MK RO SI

(71) Applicant: TELEFONAKTIEBOLAGET L M ERICSSON (publ)
126 25 Stockholm (SE)

(72) Inventors:
  • Meyer, Michael
    52062 Aachen (DE)
  • Ludwig, Reiner
    52393 Hürtgenwald (DE)

(74) Representative: HOFFMANN - EITLE 
Patent- und Rechtsanwälte Arabellastrasse 4
81925 München
81925 München (DE)

   


(54) Data flow control method


(57) A method of controlling the flow of an amount of data from a sending peer to a receiving peer of a predetermined communication protocol is described. The method comprises dividing the amount of data into a plurality of data segments, where the data segments are ordered in a sequence. The segments are sent to the receiving peer in the order of said sequence. The receiving peer acknowledges the correct receipt of a data segment and identifies the last correctly received data segment of the sequence that was received in the proper order of the sequence. The sending peer is arranged such that if it receives a threshold number of duplicate acknowledgements, it performs a retransmission. The threshold number that trigger a retransmission is an adaptive parameter and may assume values larger than three.