Patent attributes
A technique is provided for relaying data packets by an intermediate network node, the data packets being transported via a protocol, such as SCTP, in which an association containing one or more streams transporting sequenced data packets is established between two network components. The technique receives, by a transport layer, packets with individual sequence Numbers from a plurality of inbound streams. These packets are forwarded by the transport layer to a user layer without sorting. Thereafter, the user layer selects an outbound stream for each of the packets, and the packets, each of which having a sequence number that preserves the packet order determined by its original sequence number, are sent to the transport layer for transmission via the selected outbound streams.
