NVIDIA Corporation
TECHNIQUES FOR ENHANCING THE UDP NETWORK PROTOCOL TO EFFICIENTLY TRANSMIT LARGE DATA UNITS

Abstract:

A user datagram protocol (UDP) is a well-known protocol for transferring data between two nodes of a network. When data is too large to fit within a single UDP packet that can be transmitted between the two nodes, the data needs to be segmented and transmitted with multiple packets and reassembled on the receiving node. Techniques are disclosed herein, for example, for offloading such segmentation, transmission, and reassembly from the central processing units (CPUs) of the nodes. Such offloading is performed efficiently, for example, by repurposing legacy protocol fields used in UDP transmission such as the internet protocol (IP) identification (ID), time to live (TTL), type of service (TOS), and/or EtherType fields to encode information needed for efficient segmentation, out of order reception, and reassembly.