Patent ID: 7746900

Claim:
An electronic device configured to communicate on a computer network, the device comprising: a network adapter, the network adapter having a physical network interface configured to transmit packets to and receive packets from the computer network; wherein the device is configured to communicate according to a network protocol stack having: a network-level protocol layer configured to provide a transmission service for transferring packets to and from the computer network, and a device-level protocol layer configured to send and receive information specific to an interface of a remote electronic device over the network via the transmission service of the network-level protocol layer; wherein the network-level protocol layer is configured to interface a network layer with a transport layer of the International Standards Organization Open System Interconnection (ISO OSI) network protocol model; and wherein the network protocol stack further comprises: an Ethernet-type header; a network-level header operably attached to the Ethernet-type header; and a data frame operably attached to the network-level header.