Patent ID: 7551638

Claim:
A network station, comprising: a host device including a host memory to store a plurality of data frames and a plurality of transmit frame descriptors, the plurality of transmit frame descriptors describing a location of a corresponding data frame within the host memory; a network interface unit, coupled to the host device, including a controller to fetch a first one of the transmit frame descriptors from the host memory to enable a first transmission of at least one portion of a first one of the plurality of data frames based on the first transmit frame descriptor and to fetch a next one of the transmit frame descriptors from the host memory prior to completion of the first transmission, wherein the first and next transmit frame descriptors are stored in an interface memory of the network interface unit, the interface memory being different than the host memory; and the controller being operable to reuse at least the first transmit frame descriptor stored in the interface memory to recover the first data frame from the host memory to enable a retransmission of the at least one portion of the first data frame in response to an absence of an acknowledgment of the first transmission; wherein the controller, after transmission of the first data frame, is operable to enable a next transmission of a next one of the data frames in response to the next transmit frame descriptor; the network interface unit further includes a transmit memory coupled to the host memory; and a physical unit, coupled to the transmit memory and the controller, to transmit the at least one portion of the first data frame; and the controller includes a direct memory access (DMA) arbiter to copy the first and the next transmit frame descriptors to the interface memory and to copy the first and the next data frames to the transmit memory based on the first and the next transmit frame descriptors, and a transmit state machine configured to select one of a plurality of modes for transmission including a burst flow mode and a transmission recovery mode.