network traffic is monitored and an optimal framing heuristic is automatically determined and applied . framing heuristics specify different rules for framing network traffic . while a framing heuristic is applied to the network traffic , alternative framing heuristics are speculatively evaluated for the network traffic . the results of these evaluations are used to rank the framing heuristics . the framing heuristic with the best rank is selected for framing subsequent network traffic . each client / server traffic flow may have a separate framing heuristic . the framing heuristics may be deterministic based on byte count and / or time or based on traffic characteristics that indicate a plausible point for framing to occur . the choice of available framing heuristics may be determined partly by manual configuration , which specifies which framing heuristics are available , and partly by automatic processes , which determine the best framing heuristic to apply to the current network traffic from the set of available framing heuristics .