Chapter 9. Sockets

The operating system includes the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) interprocess communication (IPC) facility known as sockets. Sockets are communication channels that enable unrelated processes to exchange data locally and across networks. A single socket is one end point of a two-way communication channel.

This chapter discusses the following topics:

• Sockets Overview
• Sockets Interface
• Socket Subroutines
• Socket Header Files
• Socket Communication Domains
• Socket Addresses
• Socket Types and Protocols
• Socket Creation
• Binding Names to Sockets
• Socket Connections
• Socket Options
• Socket Data Transfer
• Socket Shutdown
• IP Multicasts
• Network Address Translation
• Domain Name Resolution
• Socket Examples
• List of Socket Programming References