of an ip packet in operation the present invention is a new rlp framing structure supports and enables network layer packet boundary detection as shown by fig2 through 5 the present invention works by defining each rlp framing structure as an rlp frame that encapsulates either an ip packet or a fragment of an ip packet the header of each rlp frame includes bits as indicated in fig3 through 5 specifically each rlp header includes an 8 bit packet sequence number that is an incremental sequence number to identify each packet a one bit fragmentation flag is also included that will identify whether the given rlp frame is a fragment or not for a given non fragmented rlp frame a length in unit of octets of 11 bits is used to indicate the length of a packet overall the header in a non fragmented rlp frame is 20 bits as shown in fig4 and 5 for a given fragmented rlp frame a length in unit of octets of 10 bits is used to indicate the length of a packet fragment if the one bit fragmentation flag indicates that the given rlp frame is a fragment of the respective packet then a fragment beginning flag and fragment ending flag at one bit each will also be included in.