Method and apparatus for offloading message segmentation to a network interface card

One embodiment of the present invention provides a system that facilitates offloading message segmentation from a central processing unit onto a network interface card. The system operates by first receiving a TSO-send message at the network interface card, wherein the TSO-send message contains information about the message to be sent. Next, the system uses a header address from the TSO-send message to access a message header from memory using remote direct memory access. The system then uses a payload address from the TSO-send message to access a payload from memory that contains message data using remote direct memory access. Finally, the network interface card segments the payload into a set of maximum segment size (mss) segments and transmits the set of mss segments on the network.