Difference between Proprietary and Standard Protocols

Two terms are often used in networking industry, when describing about network protocols.

1) Proprietary Protocol 2) Standard Protocol

The main difference between Proprietary Protocol and Standard Protocol is that Proprietary protocols are often developed by a single vendor to use in their products. But, standard protocols are published open standards, which any vendor can use in their products.

Proprietary protocols are usually developed by a single company for the devices (or Operating System) which they manufacture. AppleTalk is a proprietary network protocol developed by Apple Inc. Appletalk protocol is an excellent protocol and Appletalk protocol work well in network environments made of Apple devices. But other Operating System software vendors may not support Appletalk protocol. Proprietary protocols will not scale well in network environments consisting of multi-vendor Operating System software products or network devices.

Standard protocols are agreed and accepted by the whole computing industry. Standard protocols are not vendor specific. Standard protocols are often developed by collaborative effort of experts from different organizations.

Examples of standard protocols are IP, TCP, UDP etc. RFC (Request for Comments) is an IETF platform to develop Standard Protocols.

To understand the concept of standard protocols more clearly, take a real-world example of shaving blade. A shaving blade has a globally agreed and accepted shape, so that it can fit well in a razor manufactured by different vendors.