早在 1996 年开始设计NDBCLUSTER之前，就已经显而易见，在构建并行数据库时将遇到的主要问题之一是网络中节点之间的通信。出于这个原因，NDBCLUSTER从一开始就被设计为允许使用多种不同的数据传输机制或传输器。Even before design of NDBCLUSTER began in 1996, it was evident that one of the major problems to be encountered in building parallel databases would be communication between the nodes in the network. For this reason, NDBCLUSTER was designed from the very beginning to permit the use of a number of different data transport mechanisms, or transporters.

NDB 集群支持其中三种（参见 第 25.2.1 节，“NDB 集群核心概念”）。第四种传输器，可扩展一致接口（SCI），也曾在非常旧的 NDB 版本中得到支持。这需要专用的硬件、软件和 MySQL 二进制文件，这些现在已不可用。NDB Cluster supports three of these (see Section 25.2.1, “NDB Cluster Core Concepts”). A fourth transporter, Scalable Coherent Interface (SCI), was also supported in very old versions of NDB. This required specialized hardware, software, and MySQL binaries that are no longer available.