The socket protocol is intended for high performance at the expense of a
non-standardized approach.  The thinking is that with http so well supported,
the socket protocol is empowered to do whatever is needed.

All data across the wire is TLV values.

(since a single character is an exceedingly common case, have a single byte TLV
for those occasions)
Single byte TL (msb: 0):
Type=0
Length=TL & 0b01111111
Types:
0: text string

(all other data has a 4 byte TLV for now)
Four byte TLs: (msb: 0b10)
Type=TL & 0b00111111000000000000000000000000 >> 24:
Length= TL & 0b111111111111111111111111
0: text string
1: json data

(msb: 0b11 is reserved), probably never to be needed