Editing TCP offload engine (section)

{{short description|Technology used in network interface cards}}

'''TCP offload engine''' ('''TOE''') is a technology used in some [[network interface card]]s (NIC) to [[Computation offloading|offload]] processing of the entire [[TCP/IP]] stack to the network controller. It is primarily used with high-speed network interfaces, such as [[gigabit Ethernet]] and [[10 Gigabit Ethernet]], where processing overhead of the network stack becomes significant.
TOEs are often used<ref>{{cite conference |date=2003-05-18 |author=Jeffrey C. Mogul|title=TCP Offload Is a Dumb Idea Whose Time Has Come |conference=HotOS |publisher=[[Usenix]] |url=https://www.usenix.org/conference/hotos-ix/tcp-offload-dumb-idea-whose-time-has-come}}</ref> as a way to reduce the overhead associated with [[Internet Protocol]] (IP) storage protocols such as [[iSCSI]] and [[Network File System]] (NFS).