THROUGHPUT IN A LAN BY MANAGING TCP ACKS

A method and apparatus are described for managing acknowledgements, including identifying data packets and acknowledgements with a connection, determining which of the acknowledgements can be eliminated, replacing the acknowledgements that can be eliminated with a single acknowledgement and transmitting the single acknowledgement. An alternative method and apparatus are described for managing acknowledgements, including receiving a data segment, keeping track of connections, determining if there are enough data segments for a pre-determined number of channel time allocations and generating the acknowledgments for a selected connection if there are enough data segments for the pre-determined number of channel time allocations.