The physical device driver begins processing Read requests in the order it received them. Notice that this might not be the same order in which the requests were issued by the application. If the physical device driver receives more than one Read request, the request is queued on the Read request queue for later processing. Applications might not see Read requests completed in the order in which they were issued. The order of the data placed in the Read requests reflects the order in which the requests were received by the physical device driver.

The data for the Read requests comes from the physical device driver receive queue. Because of timeout processing, it is normal for the total number of Read characters requested not to be read. This is not considered an error. The request is completed when timeout is completed or when the amount of data requested is placed in the Read buffer. The various kinds of Read Timeout processing are discussed in the States of the ASYNC Device Driver. To reduce the probability of a device driver receive queue buffer overrun, the communications protocol takes into account the size of the physical device driver receive queue.