Described herein is a method and system for distributing whole and fragmented requests and responses across a multi-core system. Each core executes a packet engine that further processes data packets and data packet fragments allocated to that core. A flow distributor executing within the multi-core system forwards client requests to a packet engine on a core that is selected based on a value generated when a hash is applied to a tuple comprising a client IP address, a client port, a server IP address and a server port identified in the request. The packet engine maintains each element of the tuple and forwards the request to the selected core. The packet engine can also process data packet fragments by assembling the fragments prior to transmitting them to the selected core, or by transmitting the data packet fragments to the selected core.