Patent ID: 7715321

Claim:
A method in a data processing system for the detection and recovery of a network interface card transmission control protocol acceleration offload failure, the method comprising: responsive to a failure of a host computer to receive an acknowledgement of a transmission control protocol segment comprising a request for a transmission control protocol offload function from a network interface card, retransmitting, by the host computer, the transmission control protocol segment to the network interface card, wherein the retransmitted transmission control protocol segment does not comprise the request for the transmission control protocol offload function; receiving an acknowledgement of the retransmitted transmission control protocol segment by the host computer, wherein receipt of the acknowledgement of the retransmitted transmission control protocol segment indicates the transmission control protocol offload function has failed; responsive to receiving the acknowledgement of the retransmitted transmission control protocol segment, incrementing, by the host computer, a counter to indicate a failure of the transmission control protocol offload function; and responsive to determining that the counter has exceeded a predefined number of allowed transmission control protocol offload function failures, stopping all transmission control protocol offload function requests to the network interface card for any existing or new transmission control protocol connections.