SELECTION OF PAIRED TRANSMIT QUEUE

Some embodiments provide a method for selecting a transmit queue of a network interface card (NIC) of a host computer for an outbound data message. The NIC includes multiple transmit queues and multiple receive queues. Each of the transmit queues is individually associated with a different receive queue, and the MC performs a load balancing operation to distribute inbound data messages among multiple receive queues. The method extracts a set of header values from a header of the outbound data message. The method uses the extracted set of header values to identify a receive queue which the MC would select for a corresponding inbound data message upon which the NIC performed the load balancing operation. The method selects a transmit queue associated with the identified receive queue to process the outbound data message.