The ASK protocol may be used regardless of the operating mode of the AppServer. When operating in state aware and state-reset modes, the ServerASK protocol support is provided by the AppServer agent process. However, in stateless and state-free modes, the AppServer broker performs the ServerASK duties, since the client process remains connected to the broker in these modes.

For the state-free operating mode, the ServerASK protocol is established independently on each connection in the connection pool.