In-band commands may be associated with a particular consistency interval and may indicate requested actions to be performed for that consistency interval. An application may desire to perform actions, such as additional backup, snapshots, etc. on stored data, when that data is in a consistent state...http://www.google.de/patents/US8150805?utm_source=gb-gplus-sharePatent US8150805 - Consistency interval marker assisted in-band commands in distributed systems
