On 10/17/05, Trustin Lee <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hi, > > We are using the term 'stateless' for the transport types such as UDP/IP. > But I'm a little bit confused which one is correct; connectionless and > stateless. > > Can we safely say that UDP is connectionless? Can we say protocols based on > UDP are stateless? >
Hi, I agree with sentence that UDP is connectionless - applications based on that doesn't maintain persistent connection object - they just send packets into the network willing that addressee will receive it. Are UDP-based protocols stateless? I don't think this is general rule. I can imagine protocols and applications that keep state basing on received UDP datagrams and change state of application when some specific datagrams arrive. Take RADIUS as an example - accounting specification defines 3 types of packets: Accounting-Start, Interim-Update and Accounting-Stop. I believe all of applications based on RADIUS changes state of their internal objects when receiving such packets :-) -- best regards, Michal
