Claims
- 1. A system for maintaining a sequence of packets transmitted by at least one producer node to at least one consumer node in a computer network, including:a pipelining subsystem configured to pipeline packets from said producer node in the absence of acknowledgment to said producer node of previously transmitted, unprocessed packets; a counter subsystem configured to determine a sequence count difference between a first said unprocessed packet and a current packet; a cutoff subsystem configured to terminate said pipelining of said packets when said sequence count difference reaches a predetermined threshold; a busy detection subsystem configured to detect a busy condition at said consumer node; a packet suspension subsystem configured to suspend pipelining of said packets when said busy condition is detected; and a node monitoring subsystem in said producer node, configured to determine when at least one said consumer node in said network fails to meet a predetermined response criterion.
- 2. The system of claim 1, wherein said node monitoring subsystem includes a busy acknowledgment queue configured to store a plurality of busy acknowledgments received from said consumer node.
- 3. The system of claim 2, wherein said node monitoring subsystem is configured to make said determination based upon said busy acknowledgment queue storing at least a predetermined number of said busy acknowledgments.
- 4. The system of claim 1, wherein said predetermined response criterion includes a predetermined amount of time during which said producer node receives a plurality of busy acknowledgments from said consumer node.
- 5. The system of claim 1, wherein said predetermined response criterion includes a predetermined amount of time during which said producer node receives no acknowledgment from said consumer node.
Parent Case Info
This application is a divisional application of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 08/673,849, entitled “System for Maintaining Strongly Sequentially Ordered Packet Flow in a Ring Network with Busy and Failed Nodes”, filed Jul. 1, 1996, now U.S. Pat. No. 6,065,052.
US Referenced Citations (4)