Described embodiments provide a transceiver for transferring data between a media controller and a host device through a communication link. The transceiver includes a first interrupt generator configured to i) generate a first interrupt when a command is received from the host device and ii) provide the received command to a receive buffer. A command processing module i) retrieves the received command from the receive buffer, ii) processes the received command, and iii) provides data request data in response to the received command to a transmit buffer. A datagram generator is configured to provide datagram data to the transmit buffer and a second interrupt generator is configured to generate a second interrupt when data in the transmit buffer is ready for transmission. The transmit buffer interleaves i) the data request data in response to the received command and ii) the datagram data, when provided to the communication link.