A TCP/IP offload system is disclosed. The system comprises a software TCP/IP module (12) arranged to be executed on a host processor (10), and a hardware TCP/IP device (20). The hardware TCP/IP device (20) is arranged to pass responsibility for a TCP connection to the software TCP/IP module (12) when an exception event occurs. This can allow the amount of hardware required to implement the TCP/IP device to be minimized, and/or allow the TCP/IP device to be optimized for low latency. A hardware parser for parsing documents encoded in a markup language is also disclosed.
