US Patent 7257681 Maintaining entity order with gate managers

A technique for maintaining order among a plurality of entities contained in an intermediate node by ensuring orderly access to a resource shared by the entities. A request is generated to access the resource. The request is placed on a queue associated with an entity. The request eventually reaches the head of the queue. An identifier generated by a gate manager is compared with an identifier associated with the queue to determine if they match. If so, the request is transferred to the resource, which processes the request. Results acquired from the resource (if any) are transferred to the entity.