Direct Internet Message Encapsulation (DIME) is a lightweight, binary message format that can be used to encapsulate one or more application-defined payloads of arbitrary type and size into a single message construct. Each payload is described by a type, a length, and an optional identifier. Both URIs and MIME media type constructs are supported as type identifiers. The payload length is an integer indicating the number of octets of the payload. The optional payload identifier is a URI enabling cross-referencing between payloads. DIME payloads may include nested DIME messages or chains of linked chunks of unknown length at the time the data is generated. DIME is strictly a message format: it provides no concept of a connection or of a logical circuit, nor does it address head-of-line problems.