One of the references is the [rsync protocol][1] ([short overview][2]): - Not directly validated by either ISO, OASIS, W3C, IETF(RFC), ECMA, IEC, but rsync has an [official TCP port][3] (873) and there is one RFC on the [rsync URI Scheme](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5781). (note that an ISO standard is typically charged [160 USD][4] to be accessed to...). - Plenty of clients and servers, the reference implementation being the [rsync](http://rsync.samba.org/) application. - File synchronization, but [no conflict handling][5] - Bandwidth as low as possible: [The rsync algorithm](http://rsync.samba.org/tech_report/): > The algorithm identifies parts of the source file which are identical > to some part of the destination file, and only sends those parts which > cannot be matched in this way. Effectively, the algorithm computes a > set of differences without having both files on the same machine. The > algorithm works best when the files are similar, but will also > function correctly and reasonably efficiently when the files are quite > different. [1]: http://rsync.samba.org/how-rsync-works.html [2]: http://tutorials.jenkov.com/rsync/network-protocol.html [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_TCP_and_UDP_port_numbers [4]: http://math.stackexchange.com/q/658965/24265 [5]: http://doc.opensuse.org/products/draft/SLES/SLES-admin_sd_draft/cha.net.sync.html