Patent ID: 8578397

Claim:
A system, comprising: first and second host computers having, respectively, first and second virtual interposer logic, first and second send/receive logic and first and second at least partial device driver stacks therein; wherein: the first and second send/receive logics are configured to communicate packets between one another via a network, the packets representing commands and data passing between a user-level application at the first host computer and a peripheral device at the second host computer; the first and second virtual interposer logics are configured to interface the first and second send/receive logics to the first and second at least partial device driver stacks within their respective host computers; and the system includes at least one configuration chosen from the following group: (1) speculative write completion functionality in the first virtual interposer logic, wherein the speculative write completion functionality comprises logic for indicating to the first at least partial device driver stack that an isochronous write request has been completed even though the isochronous write request has not yet actually been transmitted to the second host computer, and (2) speculative read functionality in the second virtual interposer logic, wherein the speculative read functionality comprises logic for repeatedly issuing speculative isochronous read requests to the second at least partial device driver stack, results of the isochronous read requests being used by the first host computer to satisfy an actual isochronous read request generated by the first at least partial device driver stack, without transmitting the actual isochronous read request to the second host computer.