data serialization and transport using python:protocol question

Hello list,
I've got a quick question.
I was looking at using the struct module to serialize some data for transportation through a socket or a pipe, and was trying to figure out the most efficient way of setting this up. 
I'd like the max length of a message to be 4096, which is 4 kb in size.
Now, when I set this up, I can pad with zeros, but that means that for every message, whether it's 3 chars long or 500 chars long, I still have all that extra overhead. 
Is there an easier way to do this that wouldn't be so bandwidth consuming?
4 kb may not be much, but it'll get rough if there are multiple people connecting to the same server. I'd thought about keeping the length of the data and adding that to the top of the struct, then decompressing using that, but I'd have to unpack the structure twice, unless there is a way I can just read the int off the top, and do something like: 
">dd"+str(length)+"s" etc...


Thanks,
Tyler Littlefield
Web: tysdomain.com
email: tyler@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
My programs don't have bugs, they're called randomly added features.

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