Hmm. I remember KA9Q, Crynwr packet drivers, Trumpet Winsock, etc. I don't think the creators of any of these got enough credit or compensation. Probably other similar solutions as well. I think there was an open source ne2000 driver with similar popularity.
Interesting fact: when you ran a Rexx program, the OS precompiled it to IR and prepended it to the script. As a result, Rexx programs could run pretty quick (for the time).