Safe transmit packet processing for network function virtualization applications

A method of packet processing comprising:

• initializing, by a device driver, a network interface controller (NIC), wherein the device driver is loaded in an operating system (OS) by a kernel of the OS;
• assigning, by the device driver, a plurality of rings to use specific physical memory pages, wherein
• the plurality of rings include transmit rings and receive rings,
• one or more of the transmit rings are utilized by an application in an application memory space,
• the transmit rings are assigned to a first set of physical memory pages,
• a first page of the first set of physical pages is writeable by the application;
• and
• initiating, by the device driver, a mapping of the transmit rings into the application memory space.

A non-transitory machine readable medium storing code which, when executed by a computer system, cause the computer system to:

• load, by a kernel, a device driver in an operating system;
• initialize, by the device driver, a network interface controller (NIC);
• assign, by the device driver, transmit rings to a first set of physical memory pages;
• and
• initiate, by the device driver, a mapping of the transmit rings into an application memory space.