An emulator module integrated with a hypervisor executes on a host computer having a physical network interface card (pNIC). The hypervisor hosts a virtual machine having a virtual NIC (vNIC). The pNIC has pNIC receive pointers to point to receive packets loaded into a receive buffer by the pNIC. The vNIC has vNIC receive pointers for retrieval of the receive packets from the receive buffer. The emulator module accesses a pNIC receive pointer in the pNIC that points to the receive packet loaded into the receive buffer by the pNIC, and maps a vNIC receive pointer to the pNIC receive pointer accessed by the emulator module, to enable the vNIC to retrieve the receive packet from the receive buffer using the vNIC receive pointer. The emulator module notifies the vNIC to retrieve the receive packet from the receive buffer.