When assessing networking protocols, we should pay attention to at least:
- Simplicity of implementation
- Resource use (e.g. how much bandwidth is used compared to the actual amount of transferred information)
- Offline tolerance (Does it depend on constant connectivity? How well does it work in a local network that has no world connectivity?)
- Decentralization (How well does it tolerate small servers/peers that are not always online? Does the design encourage large centralized servers?)
Some protocols:
- WWW
- Offline-tolerant messaging protocols
- Offline-intolerant messaging protocols
- Peer-to-peer
- Encryption
- ?SSL
- Remote access
- Wired device-to-device communication
- Character terminal connections
- Packet networking
- Wireless networking