One embodiment of the present invention provides a system that facilitates construction of a forward error correction (FEC) coded Ethernet frame. The system generates a number of FEC parity bits for the conventional Ethernet frame and inserts a start sequence before the conventional Ethernet frame. Next, the system appends an even- or odd-delimiter to the conventional Ethernet frame. The even-delimiter and the odd-delimiter are selected such that there is a sufficiently large Hamming distance between them, thereby reducing the probability of mistaking the even-delimiter for the odd-delimiter, or mistaking the odd-delimiter for the even-delimiter, if bit error occurs.