A spurious timeout (STO) response allows a sending device to conservatively adjust congestion state parameters and maintain the packet flow, after detection of the STO. Since occurrence of an STO may be accompanied by data loss, the STO response couples the spurious timeout and the loss event by maintaining a value of previously available bandwidth and increasing a limit that a sending host can send based on a pattern of returned acknowledgements. In particular, the limit is increased by the maximum size of a data segment that the sending host can send each time an acknowledgement is receivedfrom the receiving host indicating a successful transmission of a data packet. Thus, a positive data flow may be maintained conservatively while avoiding further packet losses and an unnecessary re-transmission of data packets that may have been successfully received by the receiving host.