Patent ID: 7639715

Claim:
A system coupled to a network for receiving and sending network packets, comprising: a host processor that executes an operating system within an operating system context, and a plurality of applications, each application being executed within an application context that is different from the operating system context; and a network adapter having a TCP/IP offload engine (TOE) that executes a TCP/IP network protocol stack to process TCP/IP packets instead of the operating system, wherein each of the plurality of applications communicate with the network adapter via its own dedicated application specific TOE driver and the operating system interfaces with the network adapter via a separate operating system interface; wherein the network adapter includes a plurality of dedicated interface modules, each dedicated interface module communicates with the corresponding dedicated application specific TOE driver for each of the plurality of applications; and wherein each of the plurality of applications establishes a connection directly with the network adapter via the dedicated application specific TOE drivers and the corresponding dedicated interface modules, without using the operating system.