A communication method is configured to increase speed of messages reception over a bandwidth limited channel such as high frequency (HF) radio. User data arriving from a high-speed network is transformed into a format suitable for transmission over the radio channel. Message packets that will take longer to reach a destination via the radio channel as compared to alternative channels, such as a fiber optic network, are rejected for radio transmission. When the packet is received, the receiver deduces message length by using information from various error handling techniques, such as forward error correction (FEC) and cyclic redundancy check (CRC) techniques. Fill data is transmitted between message packets when no data is available. The FEC and CRC information for the fill data is modified so that the fill data will fail FEC and CRC checks at the receiving station.