what does protocol mean?

i have created a client server program and now i must document the protocols but i don't know what that means. can someone explain it please?
What you do is transmitting a stream of data.

The protocol basically tells you where a certain byte is and what meaning it has.
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For example the protocol can contain the following description

client: How do you do?
server: How do you do?
client: I am fine.
server: I am fine.
client: good bye
server: good bye.

:)
so a protocol is like what the program must do?
like your example the server must echo back the messages the client sends?
A protocol describes a dialog between a server and a client.
ok.. well in my program the server just displays the connected clients ip addresses in a listbox. there is no chat like your example
If there is no a chat between a server and a client then there is no any protocol.:)
Well clients had to connect, right? That took done communication to set up the connection.
Usually you'd defined the protocol before writing any code. Otherwise you wouldn't know how to wright your software.

Think about when does a communication partner send what to the other one. Think like vlad tried to illustrate at a telephone call.

If your client f.e. asks some simple kind of file server to append some data at the end of a file.

Think about message flow:
1. --> Client opens connection.
2. --> Client sends a file name.
3.1 <-- Server accepts file name.
3.2 <-- Server doesn't accept file name. It returns an error condition.
4. --> Client may have to ask for permission to append something to this file.
5.1 <-- Server prohibits: The server replies accordingly and closes the connection.
5.2 <-- On permission the server may ask for the number of bytes to be appended.
...

Think about errors:
F.e. if you have defined a protocol like indicated above, you may have to define what's happening if a client starts conversation with step 4.

Think about data representation:
1. If you use some kind of low level communication like streaming or datagrams you may have to define how to set message boundaries (streaming) or how to ensure message order (datagram).
2. You may also have to define some representation of your data types. One aspect may be the byte order of integer values. How do you represent real numbers, or strings, or structures, ...?


In object oriented world you'll have objects communicating by sending messages to each other. A message may be executed by the receivers method implementation which in turn may result into some other messages being send to any object. Here you may use some kind of remote object messaging as defined f.e. in CORBA. Then you no longer have to think about many aspects of your data representation and others...
HTTP: Hypertext Transfer Protocol
FTP: File Transfer Protocol
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