A communication technique enables the efficient transmission of data
through a low bandwidth and/or time delayed communication link and
minimizes the idle time of the communication link by using a deferred
acknowledgment of message bundles to temporally pack the communication
link. The transmitting system stores messages to be transmitted in a
pending message queue and applies a dynamic window to the pending message
queue to define a message bundle to be sent through the slow communication
link. The transmitting system requests an acknowledgment for at least one
message within the bundle, but does not require an acknowledgment for
every message within the bundle. Transmitted messages are temporarily
stored as outstanding messages in a retransmission queue until the
transmitted messages are acknowledged or until a time-out period
associated with the messages has lapsed. When the transmitting station
receives a timely acknowledgment in response to a requested
acknowledgment, the transmitting station removes all outstanding messages
associated with that acknowledgment from the retransmission queue.
