Patent ID: 7996548

Claim:
A method comprising: determining a virtual message transmit engine to process a received network protocol unit, wherein the virtual message transmit engine is associated with a first host physical message engine; determining a virtual message receive engine associated with the virtual message transmit engine, wherein the virtual message receive engine is associated with a second host physical message engine; the virtual message transmit engine requesting transforming contents of the network protocol unit into one or more message segments; the virtual message transmit engine requesting the first host physical message engine to transmit a request to send message to the virtual message receive engine in response to a send entry in the send queue associated with the virtual message transmit engine; the virtual message transmit engine requesting the first host physical message engine to transmit the network protocol unit in response to a clear to send message; and the virtual message transmit engine requesting transmission of content of the received network protocol unit using the one or more message segments to a memory region associated with the virtual message receive engine, wherein the transmission of the one or more message segments comprises transmission of one or more message segments to the memory region by identifying a virtual message engine address of the virtual message receive engine and independent of identifying the destination memory address of the memory region.