In computer science, soft state is

state State may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Literature * ''State Magazine'', a monthly magazine published by the U.S. Department of State * ''The State'' (newspaper), a daily newspaper in Columbia, South Carolina, United States * ''Our S ...

which is useful for efficiency, but not essential, as it can be regenerated or replaced if needed. The term is often used in network protocol engineering. It is a term that is used for information that times out (goes away) unless refreshed, which allows protocols to recover from errors in certain services. The term was coined by

David D. Clark David Dana "Dave" Clark (born April 7, 1944) is an American computer scientist and Internet pioneer who has been involved with Internet developments since the mid-1970s. He currently works as a Senior Research Scientist at MIT's Computer Scienc ...

in his description of the

Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is a research and development agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the development of emerging technologies for use by the military. Originally known as the Adv ...

(DARPA) internet protocols. While in general less efficient than well-designed "hard state" protocols when tuned for a particular network regime, soft state protocols behave much better than hard state protocols in an unpredictable network environment such as the

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...

References

External links

"Soft" and "Hard" State
{{comp-sci-stub Network architecture