Patent ID: 8149711

Claim:
An apparatus comprising: a receiver configured to receive data packets of a fixed packet size, wherein each data packet includes: a message type field of a fixed size in a first portion of the data packet, the message type field defining a message type of a message that is contained in the data packet, the message type being one of a plurality of message types, the plurality of message types including a data stream control type, the receiver to determine a message type of each received message based on a message type field of each message, and if the message type field of the data packet indicates the message is a data stream control message, the data packet further includes a token for a command associated with streams of data in a second portion of the data packet, the command having a command type, the command type being one of a plurality of defined command types for data stream control messages, the token having a fixed size and format and a numerical value, each numerical value of a set of numerical values representing one of the defined command types, wherein the defined command types include setting up a data stream between the apparatus and one or more destinations, playing the data stream, pausing the data stream, tearing down resources assigned to the data stream, and getting and setting parameters for the data stream; a network unit including a message handler, the message handler including a hardware state machine to handle the defined command types, wherein the network unit is configured to determine a command type of each received data stream control message based on a numerical value of a token of the control message and to parse a set of zero or more fields in the received data packet for command data, the network unit being configured to implement the plurality of command types; and a transmitter to transmit a stream of data, the transmitter to operate on the stream of data according to commands contained in received data stream control messages.