Patent ID: 8533357

Claim:
In a network environment that includes a first computing system communicatively couplable to a second computing system, a method of the first computing system sending first structured data via a first byte stream and second structured data via a second byte stream to the second computing system, the method comprising the following: an act of accessing the first structured data, wherein the meaning of the first structured data is implied at least in part by the position of data within the structure, for transmission to the second computing system; an act of generating the first byte stream including a first plurality of bytes that collectively represent one or more properties of the first byte stream and a second plurality of bytes that collectively represent the first structured data, wherein the first plurality of bytes comprises: one or more bytes defining a first communications mode record, wherein the first communications mode record defines a mode of communication for the first byte stream, and wherein the first communications mode record specifies one of a simplex mode and a duplex mode; and one or more bytes defining an encoding field, wherein the encoding field defines an encoding format for the first structured data, and wherein the meaning of the first structured data is implied at least in part by the position of the data within the structure, the encoding field allowing a single address to be used for different encodings; an act of generating the second byte stream that comprises one or more bytes defining a second communications mode record, wherein the second communications mode record specifies one of a simplex mode and a duplex mode, and wherein the second communications mode record of the second byte stream specifies a different communication mode than the first communications mode record of the first byte stream; an act of passing the first byte stream to a network address at the second computing system; and an act of passing the second byte stream to the network address at the second computing system, wherein the first byte stream and the second byte stream are passed to the network address via different communication modes.