Patent ID: 7580410

Claim:
An extensible protocol processing system, mounted between a host and a network, utilized to offload the packet processing of designate network protocols from the host, and the protocol processing system comprising: a microprocessor, for offloading the packet processing of designate network protocols from the host; a medium access controller, for connecting to the network; a host interface device, for connecting to the host to exchange the packets, payloads and control messages; a message interface controller, for receiving messages and providing an interface for the microprocessor to access the received message, and for receiving messages from the microprocessor, and forwarding each the message to an assigned device; a receiving device, for temporarily storing the packets received by the medium access controller and examining the validity of the packets, and extracting at least part of header information from each received packet to form a receiving message and transmitting the message to the message interface controller; and a transmitting device, for transmitting one of two kinds of the packets to the network medium access controller, a first kind of packet transmitted directly from the host to the transmitting device via the host interface device, a second kind of packet combined by header information and a corresponding payload, the header information comprising a transmitting message.