Patent ID: 7830919

Claim:
A hardware engine for offloading transmission control protocol (TCP)/Internet Protocol (IP) processing from a software stack at a host system, comprising: a TCP Table manager that interfaces with (a) an outbound TCP processor for processing TCP packets sent by the host system, (b) an inbound TCP processor for processing TCP packets received from a network device, (c) an inbound processor for processing non-TCP network packets received from a network device, and (d) an outbound processor for processing non-TCP packets sent by the host system, where the TCP Table Manager maintains timer functions for all TCP connections at any given time in the hardware engine and maintains a linked list of network control blocks for processing network data sent by the hardware engine and received by the hardware engine, wherein the hardware engine completely offloads execution of a TCP/IP protocol stack in hardware from a host system that executes the TCP/IP protocol stack in software, wherein the TCP Table Manager includes a command processor that arbitrates between a plurality of command sources and translates a received command to an output action(s) to other TCP Table Manager components.