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

The data from the Write requests is placed in the physical device driver transmit queue. The number of characters written is considered to be the number of characters given to the transmit hardware, and not the number of characters placed in the physical device driver transmit queue. Because of timeout processing, it is possible that the total number of Write characters requested will not be transmitted. This is not considered an error. The request is completed when it times out or when the amount of data requested is given to the transmit hardware (but not actually transmitted at the physical RS232-C interface). Write Timeout processing is discussed in States of the ASYNC Device Driver.

If infinite Write Timeout processing is enabled, it is the responsibility of the application to monitor the status of the Write requests. The application might have to issue an IOCtl to disable infinite Write Timeout processing to cause the Write request to be completed (without all the data being transmitted). If an application does not check that all the data is given to the transmit hardware on each Write request, use the infinite timeout processing mode of the physical device driver to ensure that all the data has been given to the transmit hardware before the request is completed. To increase the throughput (ratio of number of characters transmitted per second to the bit rate), the application should keep the Write requests as large as possible.