What Is a Protocol?

A protocol can be defined as an agreed-upon, well-defined set of conventions for information exchange between two networked entities. Any two entities can meaningfully interact with each other only if they can communicate using the same protocol.

There are a variety of protocols to choose from when you are developing an application. You might even decide to write your own protocol, if circumstances necessitate it. In the subsequent sections, we'll explore some of the more popular protocols that are used today, namely HTTP, SMTP and SOAP. We'll also take a fairly detailed look at BEEP, a new protocol that seems to hold a lot of promise for future P2P applications.