METHOD FOR ESTABLISHING AND CLEARING PATHS AND FORWARDING FRAMES FOR TRANSPORT CONNECTIONS, AND NETWORK BRIDGE

Mechanisms which examine a network of transparent bridges for establishing a specific path for each new TCP connection established between two terminals. The path is initiated by the edge bridge connected to the source terminal upon receiving a TCP segment of the type SYN for establishing a TCP connection, with the segment being encapsulated inside a special path request packet which is transmitted by all the network links to the destination edge bridge. The path is confirmed by the edge bridge of the destination terminal by means of a unicast acceptance packet which transports the response SYN+ACK segment from the terminal B in an encapsulated manner, confirming both the TCP connection between terminals and the path chosen between A and B. The path is automatically cleared when a particular time passes without the connection being used or when the terminal sends a FIN segment in both directions of the connection.