System for forwarding data packets with different formats to different software entitles respectively based upon match between portion of data packet and filter

Claim 1

A computer implemented method for exchanging data packets having end user data and protocol encapsulation data, between a plurality of software entities that send and receive the data packets in diverse formats, and at least one device of a particular device type, wherein the method is independent of operating system type and device type, comprising the steps of: (a) registering the device and a demuxer corresponding to the device with network services; (b) allocating use of the device by a first software entity with the network services; (c) returning by the network services a handle to the first software entity defining a path from the first software entity to the device, thereby defining the path for directly transmitting at least one data packet from the first software entity to the device; (d) registering by the first software entity a filter with the demuxer, the filter for identifying data packets belonging to the first software entity and received by the demuxer from the device; (e) repeating steps (a) through (d) for each of the plurality of software entities; (f) receiving at least one data packet by the demuxer from the device, whereby the demuxer forwards the received data packet from the device to the appropriate software entity without modifying the data packet based on a match of a portion of the data packet with the filter; and wherein the device comprises an adapter and a corresponding device driver; wherein the adapter comprises an ethernet, token ring, FDDI, FSC, SCSI, or ATM adapter; and wherein each of the software entities comprise TCP/IP, IPX, SPX, NetBios, OSI, SNA, or SCSI formats.