1.2 Naming Client/Server Systems

Question 1

Based on processing how are clients and servers named?

Answer 1

They can be referred to as fat or thin.

Question 2

Differentiate between fat and thin clients.

Answer 2

A thin client does a minimum amount of processing on the client’s side. A fat client does a relatively large amount of processing on the client’s side.

Question 3

Differentiate between a Fat Server and a Fat Client?

Answer 3

Both of them depend on how much of the application processing load is placed on the client or server, if more is placed on the client then the client is called a Fat Client, if more is placed on the server then the server is called a fat server.

Question 4

Differentiate between stateful and stateless servers outlining the main drawback of each.

Answer 4

A stateless server is a server that treats each request as an independent transaction independent from every previous request, its biggest drawback is that every request will need to contain a lot of information, and the server will have to process that information every time.

A stateful server on the other hand is a server that that stores client information/state and stores treats every request while considering previous requests, and the client information. The biggest drawback is the client’s information takes up a lot of the server’s memory

Question 5

List 2 differences between stateless and stateful servers.

Answer 5

• Stateless servers do not store user information/state, white stateful servers do
• Stateless servers do need a lot of information in every request, while stateful servers need less.