A method for reliably transferring Ethernet packets between a first fabric endpoint and a second fabric endpoint through a fabric, comprising: receiving Ethernet frames; extracting Ethernet packets from the received Ethernet frames; encapsulating an Ethernet packet content comprising an Ethernet packet header and Ethernet packet payload in fabric packets at the first fabric endpoint; forming link packets comprising portions of data contained in the fabric packets; transmitting the link packets via a forwarding path comprising a plurality of hops to the second fabric endpoint, each hop traversing a respective link of the fabric; employing implicit Acknowledgements, ACKs, to verify for transmission over each link, the transmitted data content has been received at the receive side of the link without error, wherein an implicit ACKnowledgement, ACK, corresponds to a lack of receiving a retry request within a round trip time period; extracting data content from the link packets, the data content comprising divided portions of the fabric packets having encapsulated Ethernet packet content, the Ethernet packet content extracted from original Ethernet packets; regenerating the fabric packet using the extracted data content received at the second fabric endpoint; de-encapsulating the Ethernet packet content from the regenerated fabric packet; regenerating the original Ethernet packets using the de-encapsulated Ethernet packet content; and generating a plurality of Ethernet frames, each containing a regenerated Ethernet packet, wherein the Ethernet frames comprise a plurality of data blocks encoded with overhead bits and the link packets comprise a plurality of flow control units, flits, and overhead bits, each of the data blocks in the Ethernet frames and flits in the link packets comprising data bits, and wherein the ratio of overhead bits to data bits in the Ethernet frames and the link packets is the same. receiving Ethernet frames; extracting Ethernet packets from the received Ethernet frames; encapsulating an Ethernet packet content comprising an Ethernet packet header and Ethernet packet payload in fabric packets at the first fabric endpoint; forming link packets comprising portions of data contained in the fabric packets; transmitting the link packets via a forwarding path comprising a plurality of hops to the second fabric endpoint, each hop traversing a respective link of the fabric; employing implicit Acknowledgements, ACKs, to verify for transmission over each link, the transmitted data content has been received at the receive side of the link without error, wherein an implicit ACKnowledgement, ACK, corresponds to a lack of receiving a retry request within a round trip time period; extracting data content from the link packets, the data content comprising divided portions of the fabric packets having encapsulated Ethernet packet content, the Ethernet packet content extracted from original Ethernet packets; regenerating the fabric packet using the extracted data content received at the second fabric endpoint; de-encapsulating the Ethernet packet content from the regenerated fabric packet; regenerating the original Ethernet packets using the de-encapsulated Ethernet packet content; and generating a plurality of Ethernet frames, each containing a regenerated Ethernet packet, wherein the Ethernet frames comprise a plurality of data blocks encoded with overhead bits and the link packets comprise a plurality of flow control units, flits, and overhead bits, each of the data blocks in the Ethernet frames and flits in the link packets comprising data bits, and wherein the ratio of overhead bits to data bits in the Ethernet frames and the link packets is the same.