Stateless protocol v/s stateful protocol

[Vedic]

I am a student of IT pursuing the BScIT in a well known institute , despite pursuing this course I am not that much interested in the development at all , I was rather concerned in the networking , I had a subject relevant to that in my one of the semesters but there were la lot of topics I could not understand due to my extra activities in my college , on of them was that Ip protocol is a stateless protocol and TCP/IP is a stateful protocol , what does that actually mean ,what is the actual difference between the both , can anyone please elaborate on the same .

[Carley]

The difference is in the character of the connection they describe between a client and a server .Telnet and FTP, for instance are stateful protocols The client unites to the server, carry outs a series of operations by means of that connection, and then then terminates the connection . Then server can connect all of the requests mutually and is aware that they all came from the similar user.

[Lemog]

HTTP protocol is a Stateless Protocol.It is related with the with requests and responses, which are uncomplicated, isolated transactions.This is ideal for straightforward web browsing, where every request normally results in a file(an HTML document or a GIF image etc) being propelled back to the client. The server does not require to be familiar with whether a series of requests arrive from the same, or from diverse clients, or whether those requests are relevant or separate.

[Amie]

So connecting the requests mutually and keeping the user status on server is of great interest which is theoretically called a "Session Tracking" of the user. With the help of Cookies or Servlet API's session tracking tools we can easily perform the session tracking. A session can be described as a series of related interactions amid a single client and the web server which occurs over a period of time. This session could be a sequence of transactions that a user generates while purchasing a calling card over the internet or listening to the music on the new on any of the explorer .

[racbrendy]

The difference is in the nature describing the context between the client and server. Telnet and FTP, for example, are stateful client connects to the server to make the steps through the link and then click the link ends. Then the server can connect all claims between them and are aware that they came the same for you.