On: Why HTTP?

[Gonsalu]

http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec1.html#sec1.4 "HTTP only presumes a reliable transport; any protocol that provides such guarantees can be used"

UDP does not guarantee packet delivery, thus HTTP cannot ride on top of UDP.

[abstractbill → Gonsalu]

Actually it can, and does: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTPU

[Gonsalu → abstractbill]

HTTPU is not HTTP. That's why it has a different name...

[iamwil → Gonsalu]

I stand corrected on that point.

[axod → Gonsalu]

UDP [ Reliable_protocol_wrapper [ HTTP ] ]

Where Reliable_protocol_wrapper does retransmissions, acks, sequence numbering etc.

There's no reason why you couldn't use HTTP over UDP if you like, I'm sure it's most likely been done in the past - if only just for fun.

[jacquesm → Gonsalu]

I think that entry should have read 'http only presumes a reliable connection based transport'.

It would be pretty hard to make http work over something that guarantees transport of a packet but is not connection oriented.