Patent ID: 8121148

Claim:
A process of transmitting data units with a protocol stack, the protocol stack disposed in a kernel space and comprising a plurality of interfaced layers in which data units are received at the highest layer and logically passed down to and processed by succeeding lower layers, the process comprising designating at least one region in kernel memory for storage of descriptors of headers and of payload data by an application program operative in user space notifying the application about the region in kernel memory for storage of descriptors retrieving from the kernel memory header and payload descriptors stored in the kernel memory by the application program evaluating the retrieved payload descriptors to determine a type of payload data selected from the group including arbitrary, random, constant, mixed and macro forming data units from the descriptors stored in the kernel memory based on a header indicated by the descriptors and based on the type of payload data indicated by the descriptors, including when a particular descriptor is random or constant, the forming is performed in hardware when a payload descriptor is mixed, including at least two of null, raw, constant, random and arbitrary data according to the payload descriptor transmitting the data units.