Data compression
The problem with run-length encoding is that it only works on long pieces of the same value of data. If you receive a package with "ABBAABAAB" inside, that can be compressed into "1A2B2A1B2A1B"; but that's longer than the original! In this case, there's another method that can be used: checking how often a particular value comes up in the whole data package. This is often called frequency compression.