1. A method for reconfiguring a transport-layer protocol, the protocol being part of a protocol stack residing in a device with at least one network interface and a memory, the transport-layer protocol implemented by a plurality of transport-layer mechanisms, each transport-layer mechanism implementing a specific area of transport-layer functionality, the method comprising the steps of: performing an initial load of a first plurality of transport-layer mechanisms into the memory, each of the transport-layer mechanisms residing in a dynamically loadable module; unloading from the memory one of the first plurality of transport-layer mechanisms; and loading into the memory at least one transport-layer mechanism different than the first plurality.