A network communication system includes a listener that receives a plurality of data streams from a talker. The data in the data streams may be identical. The listener identifies one of the data streams as a primary data stream and another of the plurality of data streams as a non-primary data stream. The listener may process data in the primary data stream, and may buffer a minimal amount of data in the non-primary data stream. In the event of a failure or disruption in reception of the primary data stream, the listener may switch over to processing the data in the non-primary data stream. The switch over to processing the non-primary data may be performed in a manner that ensures lossless failover.