Patent ID: 7512787

Claim:
A network interface system for interfacing a host system with a network to provide outgoing data from the host system to the network and to provide incoming data from the network to the host system, the network interface system comprising: a bus interface system adapted to be coupled with a host bus in the host system and transfer data between the network interface system and the host system; a media access control system adapted to be coupled with the network and to transfer data between the network interface system and the network; a memory system coupled with the bus interface system and the media access control system, the memory system being adapted to store incoming and outgoing data being transferred between the network and the host system; and a security system coupled with the memory system, the security system being adapted to selectively encrypt and authenticate outgoing data and to selectively decrypt and authenticate incoming data; wherein the security system comprises a pipeline that masks mutable fields from incoming data prior to authentication; wherein the pipeline selectively applies an offset to the incoming data to align the data to the beginning of an IPsec header prior to masking the mutable fields.