Stateless protocol

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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:

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

External links