Embodiments disclosed herein may be implemented in the form of a method or corresponding apparatus for receiving or transmitting network communications carried at acoustic wavelengths via an acoustic medium. The corresponding method or apparatus may include a gate-level digital hardware module communicatively coupled to a communications module and define therein logic blocks configured to perform respective primitive processing functions, sequences of the logic blocks being capable of processing data units in accordance with any of the multiple communications protocols on a data unit-by-data unit basis without reconfiguring. According to some embodiments, the gate-level digital hardware module may be configured to process a data unit in accordance with a first communications protocol by directing the data unit through a first sequence of logic blocks, and process a subsequent data unit in accordance with a second communications protocol by directing the subsequent data unit through a second of sequence logic blocks.