Define in-order delivery and its importance for the EPD Pilot.

• A. In-order delivery means frames are presented to the application in the sequence they were sent.
• B. In-order delivery means frames can arrive out of order as long as the application reorders them.
• C. In-order delivery means frames can be delivered in any order.
• D. In-order delivery means frames are delivered only after all frames are acknowledged.

Answer: (A)

In-order delivery means frames are presented to the application in the sequence they were sent. For the EPD Pilot, this matters because many streams carry dependent data where earlier frames set up context or state for later ones. If frames arrive out of order, the receiver would either have to spend extra effort reassembling them or risk applying commands and data in the wrong sequence, which can cause incorrect state, glitches, or playback issues. Delivering data in order keeps the processing deterministic, simplifies the protocol logic, and reduces the buffering and reordering burden on the application. The other options describe cases where the app would have to reorder, where order isn’t guaranteed, or where delivery waits for full acknowledgment, none of which ensure that the application sees frames in the original sending order.