Patent ID: 7535913

Claim:
An integrated network adapter for decoding and encoding network protocols and processing data, comprising: a hardwired data path for processing streaming data; a hardwired data path for receiving and transmitting packets and for encoding and decoding packets; a plurality of parallel, hardwired protocol state machines; a hardwired transport offload engine (TOE); a processor integrated with said TOE; a module that provides optimized hardware support for any of Network Address Translation (NAT), IP masquerading, and port forwarding via port range registers that forward all packets of a specified type UDP or TCP that fall in a programmable range of ports to an exception path; wherein each protocol state machine is optimized for a specific network protocol; wherein said protocol state machines execute in parallel; and means for scheduling shared resources based on traffic; wherein said port range registers enable certain ranges of ports to be used for network control operations and said port forwarding.