I wasn’t paying attention, but the Patent Office awarded me a second patent in July, United States Patent #7,394,813 for “Systems and methods for implementing an acknowledgement mechanism for transmission of a real-time data stream”
Systems and methods for implementing an acknowledgement mechanism for transmission of a real-time data stream from a sending system to a receiving system are disclosed. An exemplary method implemented in a sending system involves establishing a connection with a receiving system for transmitting a real-time data stream to the receiving system. The method also involves transmitting a current segment of the real-time data stream to the receiving system. If an acknowledgement of the current segment is not received from the receiving system during a predetermined time period, the method also involves discontinuing any retransmission attempts for the current segment and transmitting a next segment to the receiving system.
It’s a way of tricking TCP into letting a sender drop a segment that’s no longer interesting. My first patent was #7,239,626, “System clock synchronization in ad hoc and infrastructure wireless networks.” All about synchronizing our watches so we can strike at dawn.
My coolest applications are still pending.