Reliable communications using a point to point protocol

A network device connected to an Ethernet physical layer connection, the network device comprising:

• processing circuitry and a storage device, wherein the processing circuitry has access to the storage device and is configured to:
• construct a frame having a twelve-byte field, a two-byte field, and a data field, wherein the two-byte field includes information identifying whether the frame is to be interpreted as an Ethernet frame,
• output, over the Ethernet physical layer connection to a destination network device, the frame by transmitting the twelve-byte field, followed by the two-byte field, and followed by the data field, and
• output, over the Ethernet physical layer connection to the destination network device, an Ethernet frame check sequence calculated based on the frame, wherein the Ethernet frame check sequence indicates whether the frame includes an error indicating to the destination network device to refrain from processing the frame.