In practical systems, reliable communication is often accomplished by coding
at different network layers. We question the necessity of this approach and
examine when it can be beneficial. Through conceptually simple probabilistic
models (based on coin tossing), we argue that multicast scenarios and protocol
restrictions may make concatenated multi-layer coding preferable to physical
layer coding alone, which is mostly not the case in point-to-point
communications.Comment: Paper presented at Allerton Conference 201