Apparatus and methods are disclosed herein for remote, direct memory access (RDMA) technology that enables direct memory access from one host computer memory to another host computer memory over a physical or virtual computer network according to a number of different RDMA protocols. In one example, a method includes receiving remote direct memory access (RDMA) packets via a network adapter, deriving a protocol index identifying an RDMA protocol used to encode data for an RDMA transaction associated with the RDMA packets, applying the protocol index to a generate RDMA commands from header information in at least one of the received RDMA packets, and performing an RDMA operation using the RDMA commands.