Binary Protocols over IP with python

[Ng Mui]

I'm a python newbie and want to know if it's suitable for prototyping
binary protocols over UDP, TCP or raw IP sockets.

I'm confident I can implement the basic socket stuff but what I'm not
sure about is how to implement the messages I want to send...is there 
an example somewhere I can look at, or can someone describe it?

I only saw text-based protocols like HTTP, Telnet, FTP in the python libraries.
It seems like everything is sent over a socket as a string, so how do
I set a particular bit in a message or code an IP address as a sequence of 
bytes in a certain place in the message??

Thanks for any tips

NG MUI