Stateless protocol
In computing, a stateless protocol is a communications protocol that treats each request as an independent transaction that is unrelated to any previous request so that the communication consists of independent pairs of request and response.
See Client-server model.
Contents
Description
A stateless protocol does not require the server to retain session information or status about each communications partner for the duration of multiple requests.
Examples of stateless protocols include the Internet Protocol (IP) which is the foundation for the Internet, and the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) which is the foundation of data communication for the World Wide Web.
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.
Disadvantage of additional information
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
In contrast, a protocol which requires keeping of the internal state on the server is known as a stateful protocol.
See also
- Client-server model
- Computer science
- Communications protocol
- Computing
- HATEOAS
- Session (computer science)
- Soft state
