A system and method for facilitating both in-order and out-of-order packet reception in a SAN includes requester and responder nodes that maintain local copies of a message sequence number. Each request packet includes an ordering field specifying whether the packets must be received in-order. The request node includes a copy of the local sequence number in each packet transmitted and increments its local copy of the sequence number only for packets that must be received in order. The responder node includes the received message sequence number in all response packets and increments its local copy of the message sequence number only if the ordering field specifies that the packets must be received in order.