A communication system is configurable to operate in either a transparent mode or a data streaming mode. In the transparent mode data is transferred to a data requesting component from a data source using a request-response protocol. In the data streaming mode a second data transfer component is configured to obtain data from the data source component via a third data link, and to transfer the data to a first data transfer component via a second data link, which has a relatively higher latency, without using the request-response protocol. The first data transfer component is configured to store the transferred data and to transfer the stored data to the data requesting component via the first data link upon receiving a request for the stored data from the data requesting component.