Creation and use of control information associated with packetized network data by protocol drivers and device drivers

摘要

A method, computer program product, and data structure that allows any software component processing network data to communicate control information to and cooperate with another software component by associating control information with a packet of network data. The present invention associates control information with the network data upon which the control information will operate by appending one or more control data structure to a packet descriptor that is common to all software components processing the network data. Furthermore, the control data structure is "tagged" with a class ID value that allows all concerned software components to recognize and utilize the control information. In this manner, any software component may cooperate with and communicate to another software component that processes the network data regardless of any intervening software components.