Review of BEEP

Historically, each Internet application protocol has defined its own set of rules for exchanging control and data information. Although there are a lot of similarities (e.g., dot-stuffing in SMTP and POP, octet counts in HTTP and IMAP, 3-digit reply codes in FTP and SMTP), there isn't a lot of reuse of design.

As a result, designers of new application protocols usually have to make the same set of design decisions -- over and over again -- to deal with the same set of trade-offs, but usually without the benefit of institutional history.

BEEP is an application protocol framework for connection-oriented, asynchronous, request-response interactions. This particular subset supports a large class of Internet applications, and provides solutions to common design issues for those applications, including: framing, segmentation, structuring, and multiplexing of messages, along with authentication and privacy.

BEEP working group, 48th Meeting of the IETF, Pittsburgh, PA