This is an unpolished draft of the third edition of this e-book. If you find any error or have suggestions to improve the text, please create an issue via https://github.com/CNP3/ebook/issues?milestone=3 or help us by providing pull requests to close the existing issues.
There are two important models used to organize a networked application. The first and oldest model is the client-server model. In this model, a server provides services to clients that exchange information with it. This model is highly asymmetrical: clients send requests and servers perform actions and return responses. It is illustrated in the figure below.
The client-server model was the first model to be used to develop networked applications. This model comes naturally from the mainframes and minicomputers that were the only networked computers used until the 1980s. A minicomputer_ is a multi-user system that is used by tens or more users at the same time. Each user interacts with the minicomputer by using a terminal. Such a terminal was mainly a screen, a keyboard and a cable directly connected to the minicomputer.
There are various types of servers as well as various types of clients. A web server provides information in response to the query sent by its clients. A print server prints documents sent as queries by the client. An email server forwards towards their recipient the email messages sent as queries while a music server delivers the music requested by the client. From the viewpoint of the application developer, the client and the server applications directly exchange messages (the horizontal arrows labeled `Queries` and `Responses` in the above figure), but in practice these messages are exchanged thanks to the underlying layers (the vertical arrows in the above figure). In this chapter, we focus on these horizontal exchanges of messages.
Networked applications do not exchange random messages. In order to ensure that the server is able to understand the queries sent by a client, and also that the client is able to understand the responses sent by the server, they must both agree on a set of syntactical and semantic rules. These rules define the format of the messages exchanged as well as their ordering. This set of rules is called an application-level `protocol`.
An `application-level protocol` is similar to a structured conversation between humans. Assume that Alice wants to know the current time but does not have a watch. If Bob passes close by, the following conversation could take place :
Such a conversation succeeds if both Alice and Bob speak the same language. If Alice meets Tchang who only speaks Chinese, she won't be able to ask him the current time. A conversation between humans can be more complex. For example, assume that Bob is a security guard whose duty is to only allow trusted secret agents to enter a meeting room. If all agents know a secret password, the conversation between Bob and Trudy could be as follows :
