Patent ID: 7443848

Claim:
A method for reducing prefetching of incoming packets, the method comprising: receiving a packet at a network interface card (NIC) in communication with a host computer system (host system) and a network, the packet received from the network, the packet having a packet address; performing a lookup of an information table to determine whether prefetching was recently performed on the packet address, wherein the information table includes packet addresses associated with recently received packets; forwarding the packet to the host system without having to prefetch the packet, if the packet was recently prefetched; and matching the packet address with known packet addresses in a memory at the NIC, if the packet was not recently prefetched, wherein a match of the packet address with a known packet address triggers prefetching of the packet and the information table is undated, wherein a non-match of the packet address with the known packet addresses indicates prefetching of the packet is not needed and the packet is forwarded to the host system.