Implementing and Designing a protocol for client server application

Question

I'm just investigating about implementing and designing a protocol, but I'm stucked on how to start!

Let's take an example the LDAP protocol, I have the rfc and I have the asn1 grammar specification.

Now How can I start developing a server in a such a way that a client compliant to the RFC LDAp can communicate with me without having any kind of problem?

LDAP it's just an example, I can implement FTP, or custom protocol.

But I want to be sure that I am standard for any client once the protocol is defined, even if the implementation is different.

So which is the way of communication?

Can you give some good starting points?

Thanks

P.S: I would like to implement the server in python but that's not important according what I said.

Answer 1

Start with an asn.1 library. Then make a server that does what the RFC says to do. Protocols are like APIs, only you have to implement the guts instead of the wrapper. You communicate LDAP (or FTP) messages over a transport protocol like TCP. If you need help making a server, you might want to look into twisted.