What is stateless?

A protocol is stateless if there is no relation between subsequent request-response pairs. The server can handle each request uniquely and does not have to keep a session state for the client. It does not keep track of configuration settings, transaction information or any other data for the next session. HTTP is a stateless protocol . This means that a Web server treats each HTTP request for a page as an independent request. The server retains no knowledge of variable values that were used during previous requests . In a purely stateless environment you wouldn't need session id. Each request would contain all the information the server would need to process. But many applications need to maintain state to keep track of whether or not a session is authenticated to view certain content or to keep track of what a user is doing. ASP.NET session state identifies requests from the same browser during a limited time window as a session, and provides a way to persist variable values for the duration of that session. ASP.NET-MVC , however, does not use server-side controls so it doesn't have to maintain state. The MVC model separates the problem domain into the three partitions so that data is delivered to the client in a streamlined manner. Statefull means that there is memory of the past. Previous transactions are remembered and may affect the current transaction.