Abstract: System and method for maintenance and examination of timers for a computer system having connections in a networking system. Timer values in a connection table each indicate a timeout for a timer for a connection, where each connection has multiple timers, and one of the timer values is written to a global timer array for each connection such that the global timer array can be scanned to determine when timeouts occur for active connections. Sparse restart of a timer includes restarting the timer if data is communicated with a connected computer before the timeout occurs and after a predetermined time interval after timer start, and not restarting the timer if data is communicated before the timeout occurs and within the predetermined interval after timer start.

Abstract: A method, computer program product and system for processing TCP/IP packets. A TCP protocol stack may store a payload of a received TCP/IP packet in a data fragment list. The TCP protocol stack may further read the header of the received packet to extract a value used to index into a table storing a list of transport control blocks (TCBs). The TCP protocol stack may further perform a lock and a read operation on the TCB indexed in the table. The TCP protocol stack may further transmit the payload to the TCP application without requiring the application to perform a lock, read, write or unlock operation on the indexed TCB since the TCP protocol stack and the TCP application are operating on the same thread. By the TCP application foregoing the lock, read, write and unlock operations on the TCB, there is a reduction in the number of memory accesses.