Patent ID: 7877519

Claim:
A method, comprising: generating a packet, by a protocol driver, having connection information in a packet header, wherein the connection information includes at least one of source information and destination information indicating a source and destination of the packet; determining whether a first table has one hash value associated with the connection information in the packet, wherein the hash value is determined by applying a hash function to the connection information, wherein the first table has entries providing associations of connection information from packets and values determined by applying the hash function to the connection information; applying the hash function to the connection information to determine a hash value by calculating the determined hash value from the connection information in response to determining that the first table does not have one hash value for the connection information; adding an entry to the first table associating the connection information and the hash value determined by applying the hash function to the connection information, wherein the added hash value is used to determine one of a plurality of network adapters to use to transmit the packet; forwarding the packet and the hash value associated with the connection information in the first table to a network driver in response to determining that the first table has one hash value for the connection information; using, by the network driver, the forwarded hash value to determine one of the plurality of network adapters to use to transmit the packet over a network; generating a second table, wherein the determined hash value identifies an entry in the second table, wherein each entry in the second table is associated with one of the network adapters, and wherein using the hash value to determine one of the network adapters comprises determining from the second table the adapter associated with the entry identified by the hash value; applying the hash function to the connection information for the packet to determine the hash value associated with the connection information; and adding one entry to the first table associating the connection information with the hash value generated from the connection information.