Patent ID: 7299266

Claim:
A method comprising: receiving a work request in an Internet protocol suite offload engine from a host, wherein the Internet protocol suite offload engine is embodied in hardware coupled to the host; in response to receiving the work request, registering in a translation table a memory region associated with the host, wherein the hardware maintains sequence numbers and acknowledges all frame transfers, and wherein paths used by the work request and a corresponding positive acknowledgement of the work request are asymmetric; translating, in the Internet protocol suite offload engine, a virtual address to a physical address associated with the memory region; validating, in the Internet protocol suite offload engine, the virtual address; accessing data associated with the virtual address; generating a tag associated with the memory region; in response to registering the memory region returning the tag to the host wherein the tag is associated with the memory region; performing an input/output transaction over a connection protocol in a network with a remote node using the tag to refer to the memory region wherein in the input/output transaction data is transferred using direct access to the memory region; wherein the memory region is registered in response to processing a combined register memory region and send work request associated with a transaction in an upper level protocol and the method further includes: receiving an incoming transaction send message in the upper level protocol, wherein the transaction send message includes a request to deregister a tag associated with the memory region; and in response to receiving the send message deregistering the memory region associated with the tag.