One embodiment relates to a method of communicating data between a transmitter and a receiver of a communication system. In this method, a payload data stream is received from a network interface layer. The payload data stream includes data units eligible for retransmission and data units non-eligible for retransmission. These data units are grouped into containers, where a container is associated with a container identifier that distinguishes the container from other containers. The containers are grouped into data transmission units, where a data transmission unit includes at least one container along with redundancy information that facilitates error detection for that data transmission unit. The data transmission units are transmitted to the receiver as a transmission data stream. Other methods and systems are also disclosed.