Stateless protocol

In computing, a stateless protocol is a communications protocol in which no information is retained by either sender or receiver:

• The sender transmits a packet to the receiver and does not expect an acknowledgment of receipt
• The receiver to does not retain session information or status about each communications partner

Examples

Examples of stateless protocols include:

• Internet Protocol (IP) which is the foundation for the Internet
• Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) which is the foundation of data communication for the World Wide Web.
• A UDP connection-oriented session is a stateless connection because neither system maintains information about the session during its life

Simplified server design

The stateless design simplifies the server design because there is no need to dynamically allocate storage to deal with conversations in progress.

If a client session dies in mid-transaction, no part of the system needs to be responsible for cleaning up the present state of the server.

Disadvantages

A disadvantage of statelessness is that it may be necessary to include additional information in every request, and this extra information will need to be interpreted by the server.

Stateful protocols

A communications protocol which requires keeping of the internal state on the server is known as a stateful protocol.

A TCP connection-oriented session is a 'stateful' connection because both systems maintain information about the session itself during its life.

See also

• Client-server model
• Computer science
• Communications protocol
• Computing
• HATEOAS
• Request (computing)
• Response (computing)
• Session (computer science)
• Soft state

External links

• Stateless protocol