US Patent 7966405 Session multiplex protocol

Session multiplex protocol (“SMUX”) is a protocol layered above existing reliable transport mechanisms that can be used to create multiple sessions over a single connection. Data from several different SMUX sessions can be interleaved and message boundaries preserved. Because it sits on top of reliable transport mechanisms, it takes advantage of the underlying protocols to ensure byte-alignment, loss detection/recovery, and reliable delivery. It provides a window based flow control mechanism to ensure suitable fairness among streams of different sessions and prevent deadlocks.