A mechanism for avoiding the initiation of control read transactions on a system bus coupling a host system having a host memory and an interface connected to a peripheral unit as data is moved between the host system and the peripheral unit is presented. Control information associated with data memory portions in host memory is written to the interface for data memory portions storing outgoing data and data memory portions to receive incoming data. The interface includes a controller for moving data between the host memory and the interface by first obtaining the control information for the associated data portions. The interface writes status reports in association with the movement of data between the interface and the host memory via the system bus. The mechanism thus enables data transfers to occur via the system without the initiation of control reads in absence of an exception condition.