Patent ID: 7457316

Claim:
A method for processing a chain of packets comprising: receiving, by a media access control (MAC) located on a host computer, the chain of packets from a network; obtaining, by the MAC, destination information from a first packet in the chain of packets, wherein the destination information identifies at least one application executing on the host computer; determining, by the MAC, whether destination information of the first packet matches destination information of a second packet in the chain of packets; aggregating, by the MAC, the first packet and the second packet to obtain an aggregated chain of packets, if destination information of the second packet matches the destination information of the first packet; hashing destination information to obtain a hash value; and transmitting within the host computer, the aggregated chain of packets in a single transfer to the at least one application on the host computer using the hash value, and wherein the at least one application receives the aggregated chain of packets, and wherein the host computer is a single physical computer.