BEEP: The Definitive Guide

If you need to design a protocol that really fits your application, you want BEEP--an integrated collection of building blocks that gives you "best in class" data transmission solutions for everything from framing to security. Whether you're writing a simple "fetch" client/server application or a multi-threaded peer-to-peer relaying system, BEEP provides the necessary functionality without extra overhead.

BEEP gives network developers what they've long needed: a standard toolkit for building protocols quickly and conveniently. For the first time, it's possible to create an application protocol that's tightly tuned to the application's requirements, so you can avoid reinventing the wheel.

Written by BEEP creator Marshall Rose, BEEP: The Definitive Guide is the only book on the subject--a compendium straight from the horse's mouth. This book shows you what BEEP is for and, more important, how to put it to use. After explaining concepts underlying the BEEP protocol, Rose shows you how to use the BEEP implementation in Java, C, and Tcl. You'll learn to build several working applications that use BEEP as a transport, including an implementation of the reliable SYSLOG protocol and an implementation of a BEEP transport for SOAP.

Although BEEP was standardized in 2001, different groups are already using it for SOAP exchanges, intrusion detection, instant messaging, network auditing, remote calendaring, and secure credential exchange. These groups work on different problems, but what they have in common is a simple desire to focus on the problem domain instead of the tedious details of protocol overhead. If you're a network developer, you need to become familiar with this important new tool.

Table of Contents

Foreword 

Preface 

1. Introduction
2. Concepts
3. Tuning
4. Exchanges
5. BEEP in Java

6. BEEP in C
7. BEEP in Tcl
8. Futures
Appendix. On the Design of Application Protocols
References 
Index