Connection establishment on a tcp offload engine

Abstract

A method for performing connection establishment in TCP (transmission control protocol), the method including sending a SYN segment from a sender to a TCP offload engine (TOE), the SYN segment comprising a TCP packet adapted to synchronize sequence numbers on connecting computers, creating a connection context, acknowledging receipt of the SYN segment by sending a SYN/ACK segment to the sender, and sending an ACK segment from the sender to the TOE to acknowledge receipt of the SYN/ACK segment. Alternatively, the method may include sending a SYN segment from a sender to a computer, acknowledging receipt of the SYN segment by sending a SYN/ACK segment to the TOE, creating a connection context, and sending an ACK segment from the TOE to acknowledge receipt of the SYN/ACK segment.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.