Patent ID: 7853723

Claim:
A method, comprising: maintaining a set of communication control blocks (CCBs), wherein each of the CCBs defines a transmission control protocol (TCP) connection, some of the set of CCBs being maintained in a static random access memory (SRAM), others of the set of CCBs being maintained in a dynamic random access memory (DRAM), wherein a first plurality of the set of CCBs is under control of a network interface device, and wherein a second plurality of the set of CCBs is under control of a processing device, the processing device being coupled to the network interface device, the processing device executing a network protocol stack including a transport layer comprising transmission control protocol (TCP) and a network layer comprising internet protocol (IP); receiving a first TCP/IP packet onto the network interface device from a network; receiving a second TCP/IP packet onto the network interface device from the network, the second TCP/IP packet including a data portion and a header portion; and transferring the data portion of the second TCP/IP packet from the network interface device and into a destination that is higher than the transport layer without transferring the header portion of the second TCP/IP packet into the destination, the destination having been determined by the processing device analyzing a header of the first packet, wherein the network protocol stack executing on the processing device performs no TCP protocol processing on the second TCP/IP packet.