Patent ID: 7457409

Claim:
A method for performing secure communications in a wireless local area network, the network including at least a computer that comprises a host processing unit and a networking module incorporating a security engine, the method comprising: software, hosted on the host processing unit, maintaining a transmitter queue and security queue; the software partitioning a data unit to be transmitted into N number of sub-blocks, wherein each sub-block has the same block size as a cipher involved in the security engine; the software storing the N data sub-blocks in the security queue; the software invoking an encryption function that takes the N data sub-blocks as a parameter; responsive to the invoked encryption function, the security engine fetching the N data sub-blocks from the security queue in accordance with the parameter of the encryption function; the security engine generating a cryptographic checksum through the cipher by performing encryption on the N data sub-blocks; the security engine returning the cryptographic checksum to the software; the software appending the cryptographic checksum to the N data sub-blocks; the software storing the N data sub-blocks and the appended cryptographic checksum in the transmitter queue; the software invoking the encryption function that takes the N data sub-blocks including the appended cryptographic checksum as the parameter; responsive to the invoked encryption function, the security engine fetching the N data sub-blocks and the appended cryptographic checksum from the transmitter queue in accordance with the parameter of the encryption function; the security engine generating a protected data unit through the cipher by performing encryption on the N data sub-blocks including the appended cryptographic checksum; and the security engine delivering the protected data unit for transmission on a physical medium.