A packet written to one descriptor 134A, 134B . . . 134N may be stored in a packet buffers 130A, 130B . . . 130N assigned to that descriptor 134A, 134B . . . 134N. A protocol driver 128 implements a protocol, such as a TCP/IP protocol driver, iSCSI protocol driver, Fibre Channel protocol driver, etc., in which the packets are coded and processes the packets to access the data therein.