The IEEE 1355 standard describes the communication protocol up to the packet level: a DS link packet consists of a destination address, payload, and a packet delimiter. At the application level, processes need to be able to exchange messages. The gap between these two interfaces must be covered by a communication protocol. We try to optimise the performance, i.e., network latency and throughput, induced by the protocol.
Figure 2: The format of data and acknowledge packets.