A system and method for virtualizing a hardware device node for a network interface circuit or other device. In a clone driver's configuration file, multiple virtual or clone nodes are defined. Their major numbers match the major number of the driver, but a virtual node's minor number for a Style 2 driver is calculated from the hardware driver's major number and the instance or port number of the corresponding hardware node. By creating multiple clone nodes, multiple paths through the protocol stack are created. Each one can be configured differently (e.g., for different MTU sizes), and each may be assigned a different address (e.g., MAC address). The separate addresses may be registered with hardware filters to filter incoming packets at the hardware level. A traffic classifier created in the device driver manages each virtual node's association with a hardware filter.