Question
How can I retrieve my email that is setup on my home computer from my work computer?
Answer
In previous versions of Windows, all processing needed to receive or transfer data over one network interface was done by a single processor, even in a multi processor system. Windows Vista can distribute the job of traffic processing in network communication among multiple processors. This feature is called Receive Side Scaling. Windows Vista will also support network cards with TCP Offload Engine, that has certain hardware-accelerated TCP/IP-related functionality. Windows Vista uses its TCP Chimney Offload system to offload to such cards framing, routing, error-correction and acknowledgement and retransmission jobs required in TCP. However, for application compatibility, only TCP data transfer functionality is offloaded to the NIC, not TCP connection setup. This will remove some load from the CPU. Traffic processing in both IPv4 and IPv6 can be offloaded. Windows Vista also supports NetDMA, which uses the DMA engine to allow processors to be freed from the hassles of moving data between network card data buffers and application buffers. It requires specific hardware DMA architectures, such as Intel I/O Acceleration to be enabled.
— Source: Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.org)