Acknowledgement (data networks)
In data networking, telecommunications, and computer buses, an acknowledgment (ACK) is a signal that is passed between communicating processes, computers, or devices to signify acknowledgment, or receipt of message, as part of a communications protocol. The negative-acknowledgment (NAK or NACK) is a signal that is sent to reject a previously received message or to indicate some kind of error. Acknowledgments and negative acknowledgments inform a sender of the receiver's state so that it can adjust its own state accordingly. Many protocols contain checksums to verify the integrity of the payload and header. Checksums are used  to detect data corruption. If a message is received with an invalid checksum (that is, the data received would have a different checksum than the message had), the receiver can know that some information was corrupted. Most often, when checksums are employed, a corrupted message received will either not be served an ACK signal, or will be served a NAK signal. Acknowledgment characters. ASCII code includes an ACK character (0000110 or 6) which can be transmitted to indicate successful receipt and a NAK character (0010101 or 15) which can be transmitted to indicate an inability or failure to receive. Unicode  provides visible symbols for these characters, U+2406 (␆) and U+2415 (␕). Protocol usage. Many protocols are acknowledgment-based, meaning that they positively acknowledge receipt of messages. The internet's Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) is an example of an acknowledgment-based protocol. When computers communicate via TCP, received packets are acknowledged by sending back a packet with an ACK bit set. The TCP protocol allows these acknowledgments to be included with data that is sent in the opposite direction. Some protocols send a single acknowledgment per packet of information. Other protocols such as TCP and ZMODEM allow many packets to be  transmitted before receiving acknowledgment for any of them, a procedure necessary to fill high bandwidth-delay product links with a large number of bytes in flight. Other protocols are NAK-based, meaning that they only respond to messages if there is a problem. Examples include most reliable multicast protocols which send a NAK when the receiver detects missing packets. Still other protocols make use of both NAKs and ACKs. Binary Synchronous Communications (Bisync) and Adaptive Link Rate (for Energy-Efficient Ethernet) are examples. Still other protocols such as the RC-5, User Datagram Protocol (UDP), and X10 protocols perform blind transmission  with no acknowledgment, often transmitting the same message multiple times in hopes that at least one copy of the message gets through. The acknowledgment function is used in the automatic repeat request (ARQ) function. Acknowledgment frames are numbered in coordination with the frames that have been received and then sent to the transmitter. This allows the transmitter to avoid overflow or underrun at the receiver, and to become aware of any missed frames. In Binary Synchronous Communications, the NAK is used to indicate that a transmission error was detected in the previously received block and that the receiver is ready  to accept retransmission of that block. Bisync does not use a single ACK character but has two control sequences for alternate even/odd block acknowledgment. Hardware acknowledgment. Some computer buses have a dedicated acknowledge wire in the control bus used to acknowledge bus operations: DACK used for ISA DMA; DATACK used in the STEbus, the data transfer acknowledge pin of the Motorola 68000 that inspired the title of DTACK Grounded, etc. Some computer buses do not always acknowledge every write; some or all of the writes use a posted write. The I²C serial bus has a time slot for an  acknowledgment bit after each byte.