Abstract: A method of merging two separate TCP connections terminating at a common host and "gluing" them into a single connection between two end systems, where the single connection preserves TCP end-to-end semantics. The technique retains the session setup functions of the transport layer proxy, but provides a method to push the data copying into kernel space to improve the relay operation. More specifically, a byte stream arriving on one end of the split connection is mapped directly into the sequence number space of the other split connection. This process of mapping, or TCP gluing, involves updating a subset of TCP and IP header fields; that is, source and destination addresses, port numbers, sequence numbers and checksum. The changes to the TCP/IP packet headers are on-the-fly as packets are relayed over the glued connection between the original separate TCP connections.