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,
encoding, error reporting, parallel exchanges, along with authentication
and privacy.
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