The Misconception That TCP Lets You Receive in the Same Units You Send — Designing Reception Around a Byte Stream (archived 2026-09-01)

Assuming TCP delivers data in the same units as Send or Write leads to fragmentation, coalescing, garbled text, and broken protocols. This article lays out how to treat TCP as a byte stream and frame messages at the application layer, with .NET/C# implementation examples. Archived version of https://comcomponent.com/en/blog/2026/06/09/001-tcp-send-receive-message-framing/, as published on 2026-09-01. The live article is maintained and may change after this date. First published 2026-06-09.