US Patent 8102881 Streamlined guest networking in a virtualized environment

Networking speed in a virtualized environment can be improved by utilizing an enhanced protocol and parallel stack to bypass restrictions of a conventional network stack that complies with standard networking protocols. In one embodiment, an enhanced TCP protocol enables large packets received from a guest application to bypass the guest networking stack and be received to a bottom conversion layer of the enhanced stack, which is able to segment the packet into appropriately sized segments that conform to the conventional protocol. These segments can be passed to a network interface card (NIC) or other device for encapsulation, framing, or other such processing to be transmitted to the destination as Ethernet frames or other such packets.