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Software Engineering Stack Exchange

Questions tagged [protocol]

84 questions
52
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4 answers

Has Little Endian won?

When teaching recently about the Big vs. Little Endian battle, a student asked whether it had been settled, and I realized I didn't know. Looking at the Wikipedia article, it seems that the most popular current OS/architecture pairs use Little…
Ellen Spertus
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6 answers

What is a URI Scheme?

I have searched for this question, but I haven't found a good answer. Even the Wikipedia Article on URIs does not explain it thoroughly. I thought it was the protocol for accessing a web page. e.g. HTTP/HTTPS/FTP, but the wiki article says…
b0yfriend
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7 answers

Why isn't SSL/TLS built into modern Operating Systems?

A lot of the basic network protocols that make up the infrastructure of the Internet are built in to most major Operating Systems. For example, TCP, UDP, and DNS are all built into Linux, UNIX and Windows, and are made available to the programmer…
Channel72
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Is it a good idea to multiplex blocking streams into a TCP connection?

I need several duplex channels between two hosts. There are a number of advantages to establish only one TCP connection. But I doubt multiplexing would cause some inevitable problems. Will it harm performance or increase latency significantly? And…
Sherwood Wang
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11
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2 answers

Is masking really necessary when sending from Websocket client

The current Websocket RFC requires that websocket clients mask all data within frames when sending (but server is not required to). The reason the protocol was designed this way is to prevent frame data from being altered by malicious services…
JSON
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1 answer

What is (full) semantic transparency?

I was reading the RFC 2616 regarding HTTP/1.1 when this term came up: Therefore, the HTTP/1.1 protocol provides these important elements: [...] Protocol features that provide full semantic transparency when this is required by all…
0x01Noodle
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8
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7 answers

UDP order of packets with direct connection

If i have two systems (A and B) running on LAN(INTRANET) which are directly connected. There are no routers in the middle. In this case, if system A sends a few UDP packets every few milliseconds to system B: Is it possible that system B receives…
m4n07
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6
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1 answer

audio and video data in RTP

Suppose a user wants to transmit both audio and video to another user, whose formats are AMR for audio and H.264 for video. Does the user have to transmit audio and video packets always separately? Meaning that it is not possible to mix audio and…
Banana
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5
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4 answers

When designing a protocol, is it better for a method to accept a single object of a specific type, or an array?

I'm currently designing a protocol for internal use, so it doesn't make a huge difference in this particular case, but it got me wondering: Is it better for a method to accept a single object of a specific type, or an array of objects, with the…
vilhalmer
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5
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3 answers

Difference between API and protocol?

What's the difference between an API and a protocol? To use a specific example: Is Coinbase's choice to refer to its WebSocket client specification as an "API" appropriate? It seems that many companies in their space followed their naming trend. For…
Katie
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5
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1 answer

Is it rational to convert protobuf into json to send it to a web server?

Protobuf is a good thing, it allows c++ devs to not bother with class serialization/deserialization, is fast and .proto format is very nice. It also allows automatic data validation. But the messages are not human readable, and most importantly not…
Zeks
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5
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1 answer

Three phase commit protocol

I'm trying to understand the three phase commit protocol by reading the wiki page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-phase_commit_protocol#Motivation). In the description for the diagram I posted below, it says the following: "If the coordinator…
Bryan
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5
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1 answer

Non Blocking Sockets vs Blocking sockets - UDP - C&linux

When to use blocking sockets over non blocking sockets on UDP? Question 1:What's is recommended for the following scenario ? Multiple clients send data over multiple UDP sockets, i.e. say client1 sends data over sockets 100, 101, 102,..,105 .…
m4n07
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4
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1 answer

Greek philosophers, stone tablets and dumb slaves problem

This is one of the questions that I came across while preparing for a programming interview. Design a system for Greek philosophers to exchange messages using stone tablets carried by dumb slaves. Well, the guys who had this question have…
iceBreak
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4
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Why use protocol, not call the method directly?

I was asked this question in an interview. For eg: UITableviewDelegate protocol has CellForRowAtIndexpath. Why make it a delegate method in a protocol not a method in the UITableView class and call it directly?
user96307
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