Stateless TCP

First used: 1995

Definition

A TCP-like server architecture that maintains no per-connection state. Each incoming packet is handled independently from its on-the-wire parameters (ports, sequence numbers, acknowledgement numbers), with no connection tables, no per-client memory, and no open-file state. Coined in a December 1995 engineering notebook and posed as a thought experiment for handling extreme web-server load without state exhaustion.

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