Apparatus and method for accelerating data handling in the protocol stack of a networked device. Embodiments of the disclosed invention may be used to increase the throughput rate of a networked device while offloading processing from the device's host processor. A method includes building a set of descriptors that describe the operations to be performed by a Protocol DMA Engine. A host processor builds the set of descriptors in lieu of performing the operations described by the descriptors. The set of descriptors is provided to the Protocol DMA Engine. The Protocol DMA Engine executes the operations described in the set of descriptors to produce a protocol layer output data unit from a protocol layer input data unit. The protocol layer output data unit is provided to a next layer of a network protocol stack.