Connection-Oriented vs. Connectionless Communication¶

Communication can either establish shared state before exchanging data (connection-oriented) or send each message independently with all necessary context (connectionless); neither approach is universally superior.

Tension Addressed¶

Reliability vs. Latency; Statelessness vs. Efficiency

Recognizable As¶

Session vs. sessionless APIs, stateful vs. stateless protocols, connection pools vs. per-request connections, persistent vs. ephemeral channels

Canonical Sources¶

Cerf & Kahn, "A Protocol for Packet Network Intercommunication" (1974); Clark, "The Design Philosophy of the DARPA Internet Protocols" (1988)

Transfers To¶

Database connections (pooling), API design (REST vs. WebSocket), messaging systems (persistent vs. fire-and-forget), authentication (sessions vs. tokens)