Also in applications where bit-errors (or disconnections) are to be expected, the <length><data_of_length_length> ... approach makes it hard to re-synchronize a

Also in applications where bit-errors (or disconnections) are to be expected, the <length><data_of_length_length> ... approach makes it hard to re-synchronize after errors. (think of a serial cable that might be dis/reconnected, or radio-frequency links.) A more robust encoding reserves some bit-pattern as a <start-of-message> marker, and escapes regular appearance of this marker in the payload with some special sequence. (see, for example, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Level_Data_Link_Control http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Level_Data_Link_Control ). When you start putting (for example) single "blink"-messages in distinct payloads in such a framing container, then the <length-of-message> byte of blink becomes redundant, of course.