Re: HTTP problem or Mosaic problem?

Jon P. Knight (J.P.Knight@lut.ac.uk)
Thu, 16 Jun 1994 09:19:08 +0100 (BST)


On Wed, 15 Jun 1994, Alan (Miburi-san) Wexelblat wrote:
> What's the advantage of a state-less protocol? It makes server writing
> easier. But that throws the burden off onto clients, onto the net, and onto
> information providers. You don't solve problems by shifting them around.

But you do stop the servers from tying up resources waiting for clients to
make the next move in a stateful protocol. On a heavily used server,
having the connections die between client requests can be a big win. IMHO
HTTP has been successful partly because it is easy to implement a basic
server and it doesn't rapidly overload the machine. If people feel they
need a stateful protocol, I think they should come up with something new
rather than subvert the statelessness of HTTP.

All IMHO of course.

Jon

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Jon Knight, Research Student in High Performance Networking and Distributed
Systems in the Department of _Computer_Studies_ at Loughborough University.
* Its not how big your share is, its how much you share that's important. *