March 2000
On the Design of Application Protocols
Part 2 of a 4-part of an ongoing series on Blocks technology.
SMTP is close to being the perfect application protocol: it solves a large, important problem in a minimalist way. It's simple enough for an entry-level implementation to fit on one or two screens of code, and flexible enough to form the basis of very powerful product offerings in a robust and competitive market. Modulo a few oddities (e.g., SAML), the design is well conceived and the resulting specification is well-written and largely self-contained. There is very little about good application protocol design that you can't learn by reading the SMTP specification.
[This project is no longer available online]
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