in data communication systems , data packet processing for transmission and reception may go through different stages such as segmentation or packing of the data packets on the transmission side and duplicate detection , reordering , and reassembly on the reception side . for reliable data transmission between the peers , acknowledgement based retransmission protocol known as automatic repeat request may be used where each retransmission can further segment the previously transmitted data packets . this type of data processing may lead to high memory requirements and high processing requirements . a method and apparatus are disclosed that maintain additional information about the data packets which enables virtual segmentation and packing on the transmitter side and on the receiver side , virtual duplicate detection , reordering and reassembly . performing the segmentation , packing , duplicate detection , reordering and reassembly operations in virtual manner reduce the memory and processing requirements and this may lead to reduced power consumption and improved user experience .