a system and method for placement of sharing physical buffer lists in rdma communication . according to one embodiment , a network adapter system for use in a computer system includes a host processor and host memory and is capable for use in network communication in accordance with a direct data placement protocol . the ddp protocol specifies tagged and untagged data movement into a connection - specific application buffer in a contiguous region of virtual memory space of a corresponding endpoint computer application executing on said host processor . the ddp protocol specifies the permissibility of memory regions in host memory and specifies the permissibility of at least one memory window within a memory region . the memory regions and memory windows have independently definable application access rights , the network adapter system includes adapter memory and a plurality of physical buffer lists in the adapter memory . each physical buffer list specifies physical address locations of host memory corresponding to one of said memory regions . a plurality of steering tag records are in the adapter memory , each steering tag record corresponding to a steering tag . each steering tag record specifies memory locations and access permissions for one of a memory region and a memory window . each physical buffer list is capable of having a one to many correspondence with steering tag records such that many memory windows may share a single physical buffer list . according to another embodiment , each steering tag record includes a pointer to a corresponding physical buffer list .