Data Serialization

All gateway drivers implement a serialize and deserialize method. Chunks are serialized by a sender gateways’ drivers before being sent over the network, and are deserialized by receiver gateways’ drivers before being consumed. The serialization/deserialization steps are meant to give the gateways a chance to make data suitable for transmission and caching (e.g. encrypting it, giving it a canonical encoding, compressing it, etc.).

Explicitly handling serialization and deserialization is optional.