Patent ID: 7363572

Claim:
A method of processing inbound and outbound frames using an offload unit having a delegated connection table, comprising: initializing an entry in the delegated connection table with connection state data including a connection table index corresponding to a connection selected by a TCP stack executed by a host CPU for processing by the offload unit, a sequence number, and an acknowledgement number; receiving an outbound frame having a prototype header and data for transmission from the TCP stack; segmenting the data in the outbound frame into a plurality of data segments; and for each data segment, computing a TCP checksum, determining a transmit sequence number and a transmit acknowledgement number, updating a sequence number and an acknowledgement number stored in the delegated connection table, and outputting a frame including the TCP checksum, the transmit sequence number, the transmit acknowledgement number, a TCP timestamp, and the data segment for data transmission over the selected connection, wherein the TCP timestamp is equal to a TCP timestamp received from the TCP stack if the TCP timestamp received from the TCP stack is greater than a TCP timestamp stored in the delegated connection.