Patent ID: 7716379

Claim:
A computer, comprising: a processing unit comprising at least one processor; and a driver module that executes on the processing unit, the driver module comprising a hardware control interface having at least a transmission control interface component configured to provide transmission control information and a transmission status interface component configured to provide transmission status information to a network adapter to control the network adapter to communicate in accordance with IEEE standard 802.11, wherein the transmission control information comprises: a first field comprising at least one flag, each one of the at least one flag representing transmission-related information; a second field comprising transmission rate information; a third field comprising arbitration inter-frame space number information; and a fourth field comprising contention window information; and the transmission status information comprises: a first field comprising at least one flag, each one of the at least one flag representing transmission status information; a second field comprising information related to a number of times that the network adapter has attempted to re-transmit a packet; and a third field comprising information related to a data rate at which the packet has been successfully transmitted.