The simplest epidemiologic model composed by mutually exclusive compartments SIR (susceptible-infected-susceptible) is presented to describe a reality. From health concerns to situations related with marketing, informatics or even sociology, several are the fields that are using this epidemiological model as a first approach to better understand a situation. In this paper, the basic transmission model is analyzed, as well as simple tools that allows us to extract a great deal of information about possible solutions. A set of applications - traditional and new ones - is described to show the importance of this model.