Patent ID: 7609696

Claim:
A method of using a delegated connection table, comprising: selecting, by a transmission control protocol (TCP) stack, a connection for processing by an offload unit; initializing an entry in the delegated connection table with connection state corresponding to the connection selected by the transmission control protocol (TCP) stack for processing by the offload unit; determining that a first frame is received on the connection selected by the TCP stack for processing by the offload unit; updating the entry when the first frame is received for the connection, wherein a sequence number is stored in the entry, the sequence number representing a next expected sequence number for the connection; parsing the first frame to extract TCP payload data; uploading the TCP payload data to a memory; and reading the entry when a second frame is transmitted for the connection; determining that the first frame and the second frame are out-of-sequence based on a comparison of the sequence number stored in the entry with a sequence number in the second frame; and storing a flag in the entry to indicate that synchronization is requested for the connection.