Network, Computer and Programming Resources

Network - Communication, Bisynchronous

In bisynchronous, or bisync, communication, a special (SYN) character is used to establish synchronization for an entire data block. Both sender and receiver must be synchronized. The receiver must acknowledge the receipt of each block with alternating ACK characters: ACK0 for one block, ACK1 for the next, ACK0 for the next, and so on. Two successive acknowledgments with the same ACK character indicate a transmission error. Also known as BSC, bisynchronous communication is used in IBM mainframe environments. It is used primarily when transmitting data in EBCDIC format.