This language-agnostic talk will examine the design of application protocols, with a focus on TCP/IP.

This talk is part history and part practical implementation. If you have a need to design a TCP/IP protocol, then this talk will cover everything you need. Most bugs in TCP/IP applications are actually misunderstandings about TCP/IP itself, so this talk highlights the parts of TCP/IP that are most problematic with practical advice about avoiding pitfalls with your application protocol.

We'll also be covering several mistakes from history as we go along, most specifically HTTP and the improvements it made with HTTP/1.1, HTTP/2, and the new HTTP/3 based on QUIC. Spoiler alert: QUIC is the future for almost all protocols; we'll cover how QUIC compares to TCP/IP specifically in terms of application protocol design. Today TCP/IP is more available (in terms of APIs), but QUIC is not that far off, and this talk will cover application protocol design considerations for both.