Patent ID: 6988274

Claim:
A method for representing to an application the characteristics of an underlying connection-oriented device through an integrating component, over known application-level interfaces of the integrating component, and allowing an application to take advantage of a connection-oriented I/O subsystem having the integrating component, over the known application-level interface, and without requiring the application programmer to program directly to the integrating component, the method comprising: representing to an application, over a first known application-level interface of the integrating component, the connection control characteristics of the underlying connection-oriented device related to the manner in which the connection-oriented device makes a connection for sending and receiving network data over a network, wherein the integrating component is positioned between the application and a connection-oriented device driver associated with the connection-oriented device and one or more data transport components; representing to the application, over a second known application-level interface of the integrating component, the data and data control characteristics of the underlying connection-oriented device; receiving, by the integrating component, a command from the application over the first known application-level interface that comprises a connection creation command, and wherein the computer-executable instructions operate to perform the following; interacting with the integrating component to create the connection; receiving a redirection command to send data and data control information received over the connection to a designated data transport of the one or more data transports: causing redirection of data and data control information from the previously created connection to the designated transport; and returning to the application an identifier to be used by the application for receiving data and data control information from the designated transport; receiving, by the integrating component, a command from the application over the second known application-level interface; and by the connection-oriented device driver, interacting with the integrating component in order to execute said received commands so that the application may take advantage of the connection-oriented I/O subsystem and use the connection-oriented device using the known application-level interfaces and without requiring the application programmer to program to an interface of the connection-oriented device driver.