Shortened timeout period during frame retry in a communication link

Abstract

A system and method for asynchronously transmitting data across fibers in a serial manner. Frames are provided as a mechanism to transmit associated data serially and tie the data being transmitted to a particular buffer set. Each outstanding request for each buffer set is individually timed to detect lost frames, and each buffer set maintains a state that keeps track of the progress and sequence of received frames. When transmission errors occur in the frames, the errors may affect only the information field and there is enough information in the header to identify the frame. A request can then be sent back to the other end of the fibers to retransmit the frame. In some instances, the frame cannot be retransmitted because the content of the data may have been changed by other operations in the systems. To speed recovery in these situations, the requester of the retransmitted frame sets a much shorter timer while waiting for the response since the retransmitted frame will be sent quickly, if at all.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.