Presented herein are Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) networks, RDMA protocols, and methods for performing upper layer protocol (ULP) for RDMA network configurations. Methods for performing ULP RDMA include: a client central processing unit (CPU) allocating a buffer in a memory region of a client computing device; a client network interface card (NIC) creating a steering tag for the buffer; the client CPU transmitting to a local server CPU of a local server node an initiate RDMA request, the RDMA request including source and destination (SRC-DEST) information and a requested RDMA operation, the SRC-DEST information including the steering tag and a file path for a data file; a remote server NIC of a remote server node locating the data file with the file path; the remote server NIC performing the requested RDMA operation without utilizing the server's CPU; and the client and remote server NIC's completing the requested RDMA operation.