Patent ID: 8493855

Claim:
A method for communicating over a transmission medium shared between a plurality of nodes including a source node, a proxy node, and other nodes, comprising: transmitting a transmission data unit from the source node over the transmission medium concurrently to the proxy node and the other nodes; selectively transmitting a confirmation from the proxy node to the other nodes based on whether a reception data unit corresponding to the transmission data unit is correctly received at the proxy node; based on whether the confirmation is received at a first of the other nodes, selectively transmitting a first negative acknowledgement from the first of the other nodes to the source node, where the first negative acknowledgement indicates the first of the other nodes failed to correctly receive the transmission data unit; and based on whether a second of the other nodes failed to receive the transmission data unit correctly, selectively transmitting a second negative acknowledgement from the second of the other nodes to the source node.