Patent ID: 7715436

Claim:
A method of operating intelligent network interface circuitry to facilitate the transfer of application data between at least one application, executing on a host, and at least one peer via a network, wherein application data destined for the at least one peer is provided from the at least one application in frames, via the network interface circuitry, for transmission from the intelligent network interface circuitry to the at least one peer via the network encapsulated according to a connectionless transport layer protocol, comprising: subdividing each application data frame into a plurality of parts based on packet size criteria with respect to the network layer; for each application data frame, encapsulating the parts of that application data frame into a transport layer packet by encapsulating each part into a separate network layer packet, the transport layer packet comprising a plurality of the separate network layer packets; allocating the network layer packets to streams, each such stream being characterized by a desired data rate transmission characteristic; and transmitting the network layer packets of the streams to the at least one peer via the network according to the desired data rate transmission characteristics characterizing the streams, wherein, the transmission is subjected to a limit on the amount of data to be sent; and the limit is based at least in part on a communication received from the peer, wherein the communication received from the peer includes at least an indication of an amount of buffering available at the peer to hold the data destined to the peer from the at least one application via the network interface circuitry.