What the Heck is a Protocol?

Web vs. Internet

The World Wide Web (WWW) is just one of many services that run on the Internet. While the terms Internet and Web are often used interchangeably, they refer to different things:

The Internet is the global network infrastructure that connects computers worldwide, allowing communication between two or more computers
The Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the HTTP/HTTPS protocol

Other Internet services include email (SMTP/IMAP/POP3), FTP, IRC, Gopher, and more recently, protocols like Gemini and Scroll. Each of these protocols serves different purposes and has different strengths.

Scroll, like Gemini and Gopher, is an Internet protocol - not a web protocol. This means:

It operates independently from the Web and HTTP/HTTPS
It has its own port (5699) rather than using ports 80/443
It uses its own URL scheme (scroll://) to clearly separate it from web URLs
It focuses on document transfer rather than web pages and applications
It intentionally lacks many web features like cookies, JavaScript, and complex styling

While the Web has grown increasingly complex and commercialized, Scroll aims to provide a simpler, more focused protocol for sharing and accessing documents over the Internet. It exists alongside the Web rather than trying to replace it, serving as an alternative space for content that benefits from a more streamlined approach.

The key distinction is that Scroll is a protocol for transferring documents over the Internet infrastructure, not a subset or variant of the Web. This allows it to make different design choices that prioritize simplicity, privacy, and user control over the features and complexity that characterize the modern Web.

Internet Protocol

An Internet protocol is a standardized set of rules for how computers communicate over the internet. These protocols define:

Message Format: How data should be structured when sent between computers
Request/Response Rules: What kinds of messages can be sent and what responses are expected
Port: Which numbered port the protocol uses (like 80 for HTTP or 5699 for Scroll)
Transport: Whether it uses TCP, UDP, or other transport protocols
State: Whether the protocol maintains state between messages or is stateless
Error Handling: How to handle and communicate various types of failures

Protocols can serve different purposes:

Application Protocols (HTTP, SMTP, Gopher, Gemini, Scroll) define how specific applications communicate
Transport Protocols (TCP, UDP) handle reliable data delivery
Internet Protocol (IP) handles routing packets between networks, and identifying computers with IP addresses.
Link Layer Protocols (Ethernet, Wifi) manage direct computer-to-computer communication

Scroll is an application protocol that:

Uses TCP for reliable transport
Operates over TLS for security
Is stateless (each request stands alone)
Has a simple request/response format
Uses UTF-8 encoding for headers

By defining these rules clearly, protocols allow different software implementations to communicate reliably without needing to know the internal details of how each program works. This standardization is what makes the Internet possible as a network of different computers and programs working together.

File-Transfer

File-transfer protocols serve as standardized ways to request and receive files over the internet. These protocols solve several important problems:

Resource Location: They define how to identify and locate files through URLs or other addressing schemes
Content Negotiation: They specify how clients and servers agree on what format to transfer content in
Metadata Exchange: They determine what information about files should be shared before/during transfer
Error Handling: They establish how to communicate and handle various failure scenarios
Transfer Rules: They set expectations for how data should be transmitted and received

Different file-transfer protocols make different tradeoffs in solving these problems. For example:

HTTP emphasizes flexibility and features, supporting complex content negotiation and rich metadata
Gopher focuses on simplicity with its menu-based navigation and minimal metadata
Gemini strikes a balance with TLS security and basic content-type information
FTP separates control and data channels for more detailed transfer management

Scroll’s approach as a file-transfer protocol emphasizes:

Clear metadata for every response (author, dates)
Language negotiation as a first-class feature
Document-centric resource identification
Streaming-friendly response format
Ability to request metadata separately from content

The goal is to provide enough information and features to make document sharing effective while maintaining simplicity and avoiding the complexity trap that HTTP fell into. By focusing specifically on document transfer rather than trying to be a general-purpose application protocol, Scroll can make design choices that better serve its core use cases.

Hypertext

Hypertext is text that contains references (hyperlinks) to other texts, allowing readers to immediately access related documents. In file-transfer protocols, hypertext serves several crucial functions:

Navigation: Links create paths through collections of documents, letting users move naturally between related resources
Context: The text surrounding a link explains its relationship to the current document
Discovery: Links help users find new resources they wouldn’t have known to search for
Organization: Documents can be organized both hierarchically (through directories) and associatively (through links)

Different protocols approach hypertext differently:

HTTP/HTML emphasizes rich presentation with complex markup and embedded content
Gopher uses minimal menu structures with limited context
Gemini introduces simple hypertext with inline links and basic formatting
Scroll builds on Gemini’s approach while adding missing features necessary for large documents, like inline markup, nested lists, input links, and five levels of headings.

Scroll’s approach to hypertext emphasizes:

Semantic Links: Links can express relationships (agreement, disagreement, citation) to provide more context about why documents are connected
Document-Centric: Links connect whole documents rather than focusing on page-level navigation
Contextual vs Non-Contextual: Clear separation between document context (like link descriptions) and document metadata
Simple Markup: A streamable text format that supports basic formatting without the complexity of HTML
User Control: Presentation details are left to the client, focusing markup on structure and meaning

This approach aims to preserve the power of hypertext for connecting and organizing documents while avoiding the complexity and presentation-focused nature of the Web. By keeping hypertext simple but semantic, Scroll supports rich document networks that remain focused on content rather than display.

The Smallnet

The “smallnet” (or “smolnet”) refers to the collection of alternative internet protocols and their communities that emphasize simplicity, privacy, and human-scale interaction. This includes protocols like:

HTTP using minimal web pages
Gopher
Finger
Gemini
Spartan
Titan
Scroll
Nex

Unlike the modern Web, which has grown increasingly commercial and complex, the smallnet prioritizes:

Personal publishing and authentic expression
Simple, focused protocols
Human-readable content and formats
Privacy and user autonomy
Small, interconnected communities
Low bandwidth and resource usage