binary protocols v. text protocols

Question

does anyone have a good definition for what a binary protocol is? and what is a text protocol actually? how do these compare to each other in terms of bits sent on the wire?

Answer 1

Examples of binary protocols: RTP, TCP, IP.

Examples of text protocols: SMTP, HTTP, SIP.

This should allow you to generalise to a reasonable definition of binary vs text protocols.

Hint: just skip to the example sections, or the diagrams. They serve to illustrate Tyler's rocking answer.

Answer 2

As most of you suggested we can't differentiate whether the protocol is Binary or text simply by looking at the content on the wire

AFIK

Binary protocol - Bits are boundary Order is very critical

Eg., RTP

First two bits are version Next bit is MarkUp bit

Text protocol - Delimiters specific to protocol Order of the fields is not important

Eg., SIP

One more is, in binary protocol, we can split a byte, i.e., a single bit might have a specific individual meaning; While in a text protocol minimum meaningful unit is BYTE. You can't split a byte.