device 30 includes a portion of non volatile memory nvm protected from host manipulation in such an embodiment the filter rule set can be stored in nvm on the nic and used as part of the initial nic policy at system startup on the other hand if it is not possible to disable host access to portions of nic memory it is preferable for the filter rule set to be downloaded from lss 20 at system startup a policy check at system startup could validate the filter rules retrieved from nvm but this would leave a small window open for malicious activity if an invalid filter policy is somehow inserted into nvm in one embodiment lss 20 requests that a nic 14 or device 30 upload all of its filter rules as part of a system policy check a transaction of this nature may require multiple udp datagrams to transmit all data in one such embodiment the transaction request includes a unique transaction identifier so lss 20 is able to identify returning datagrams as being associated with the request in one embodiment each nic 14 or device 30 calculates the number of datagrams it will be sending in a transaction and includes this number as well as a.