Re: TCP is a stateful protocol then why not http?
ypjofficial@indiatimes.com wrote:
Hi,
I have a following doubts.
HTTP is based on TCP protocol.
But tcp is a stateful protocol then why HTTP is stateless?
Can't http inherit the statefulness property of tcp protocol?
HTTP uses a stateful protocol internally and even then it is statelss?
how come?
Regards,
Yogesh Joshi
HTTP is intentionally stateless. It simplifies the common case for
which HTTP was intented: Transfering Hypertext.
Also, an HTTP request is sent over TCP, but that doesn't mean that
there is one HTTP request per TCP connection. Often times, a
user-agent will open several TCP sockets to download a webpage (one for
the HTML, and a few for other resources such as javascript and images).
If you were to allow statefulness based the the statefulness of the TCP
protocol, then you would limit browsing to only use one connection.
This can be extremely bad if you have high-latency or a
low-transfer-rate connection.
HTTP isn't stateless because of technical limitations, but rather by
design. It puts the burdon of state on the client end (in the form of
cookies), and allieviates the need to worry about cross-connection
state.