they will be received correctly and is not dependent on the round trip time of the link in other words the transmitter of the present invention operates independently of the state of the receiver buffer the present invention is also less complex than implementing retry across a link as well as a credit based flow control mechanism this scheme works regardless of the type of nic switch or router architecture used the hardware necessary to implement these mechanisms is relatively simple as depicted in fig1 the present invention can be used in networks between servers as well as across serial links used for i o fig2 depicts two endpoints 1 2 or nodes a and b coupled via a fabric x 5 which has a receive buffer 6 for purposes of simplicity buffer 6 will be used as a receive buffer when describing a transmission from a to x and as a send buffer when describing a transmission from x to b fabric x can be a single switch multiple switches multiple links etc the important distinction is that x includes a send receive buffer 6 which enables x to ack nak data received from a and to resend data to b without requiring the data to be resent from a upon receipt of a nak from b 0025 fig3 depicts yet another possible embodiment of the present invention in this case two intermediate points x and y include send receive buffers 6 8 as discussed above these buffers 6 8 enable x and y to ack nak data between themselves without requiring the data to be resent from the endpoints a and b if the link between x and y is particularly noisy such as a satellite link then data can be resent from.