Take the 2-minute tour ×

Here is TCP State Transition Diagram image. Is there a similar diagram for HTTP,HTTPS,SMTP,UDP,IP,IP4,IP6? enter image description here

share|improve this question

closed as off topic by casperOne Oct 10 '12 at 11:45


TCP due to its nature as being reliable is more advanced than other protocols in the same layer (like UDP). HTTP (which is at the layer above TCP) for example is known for being stateless. –  Joachim Pileborg Oct 9 '12 at 12:19
add comment

1 Answer

up vote 1 down vote accepted

There is no similar diagram for IP (4 or 6) since they are stateless. UDP is also stateless.

Higher-level protocols like HTTP and SMTP are stateful but just barely, with only a small number of linear states (e.g. wait for request, process, send reply) and so won't bother creating such diagrams.

SSL (the S in HTTPS) has more states but since it follows a fairly linear progression does not really have any kind of complex diagram. http://www.eventhelix.com/realtimemantra/networking/SSL.pdf

PPP is the only other network protocol I know of that has a complex state machine which is given in a table within the RFC. (PPP actually has two state machines, one called the "phase machine" but sadly has no detailed transition diagram for that one.)

share|improve this answer
add comment
