Patent ID: 8346993

Claim:
A method for communicating with networked clients and servers through a network device, the method comprising: receiving, at a first port of a network device, a first network data packet destined for a first executing application of a plurality of executing applications operating in the network device, wherein the plurality of executing applications are associated with corresponding application drivers utilizing independent and unique direct memory access (DMA) channels; identifying, at the network device, a first DMA channel mapped to the first port and associated with a first application driver corresponding to the first executing application; transmitting, at the network device, the first network data packet to the first executing application over the first identified DMA channel; receiving, at the network device, a plurality of segmented bus packets corresponding to a second network data packet from at least one of the destined plurality of executing applications over a second designated DMA channel; assembling at the network device the segmented bus packets into the second network data packet; and transmitting by the network device the second network data packet to the network via a second port in the network device mapping to the second designated DMA channel.