Patent ID: 7634584

Claim:
A method for interfacing a computing device with a network interface device, for use with a network, comprising the steps of: a first sending process of the computing device initiating establishment of a first transmit queue; a privileged mode process, in response to the step of the first sending process initiating establishment of a first transmit queue, establishing the first transmit queue in a virtual address space of the first sending process, the first sending process enqueueing a first data packet onto the first transmit queue for transmission onto the network, without involvement of any privileged mode routines, the first data packet having a first characteristic; the network interface device receiving at least part of the first data packet from the first transmit queue for transmission onto the network; the network interface device including a database that: identifies a set of one or more of the transmit queues in the computing device, identifies one or more data packet characteristics, indicates a correspondence between the transmit queues in the set of transmit queues and the data packet characteristics, and indicates whether data packets from each given one of the transmit queues in the set of transmit queues is permitted to be transmitted onto the network if such data packets have the data packet characteristics indicated in the correspondence; the network interface device making a first determination of whether the first sending process has authority to transmit data packets having the first characteristic onto the network, in dependence upon whether the first transmit queue is indicated in the database as having such authority; and the network interface device transmitting the first data packet onto the network only if the first determination is positive.