Patent ID: 8102769

Claim:
A method for network communication, comprising: a network adapter receiving network data from a network connection and sending the received network data to an application executed by a host system through a host system driver executed by the host system; setting a data size for the network connection; monitoring the amount of network data that is received by the host system driver from the network adapter; monitoring the amount of network data that is sent by the network adapter to the host system; and the network adapter sending no more than the set data size to the application executed by the host system until the application passes a buffer to the adapter or acknowledges that at least some of the sent data has been received; wherein a first counter value indicates an amount of network data that is received by the host system driver and a second counter value is increased when the network adapter sends network data to the host system; and wherein the first counter is reset when the first counter value is equal to the data size value and received network data has been accepted by the application.