This document defines the transport layer of the Serial Storage Architecture (SSA). SSA defines a serial interface hierarchy to be used for purposes within its distance and performance characteristics, including but not limited to storage subsystems. This standard is intended to be used with an upper layer protocol [e.g., SCSI-2 Protocol (SSA-S2P)J] and a physical layer [e.g., SSA Physical Layer 1 (SSA-PHl)]. A major goal of the SSA-TLl standard is to define a transport layer acceptable to vendors looking for an evolution from parallel SCSI and systems designers looking for opportunities to more fully exploit the capabilities inherent to a serial bus.