socket

What is Socket?

A logical endpoint for communication between two hosts on a TCP/IP network. A socket is also an application programming interface (API) for establishing, maintaining, and tearing down communication between TCP/IP hosts. Sockets were first developed for the Berkeley UNIX platform as a way of providing support for creating virtual connections between different processes.

How It Works

Sockets provide a mechanism for building distributed network applications such as client/server applications. Two sockets form a complete bidirectional communication path between processes on two different TCP/IP hosts. Network-aware applications and services can create and destroy sockets as needed.

As an endpoint for network communication between hosts, a socket is uniquely identified by three attributes:

• The host’s IP address
• The type of service needed - for example, a connectionless protocol such as User Datagram Protocol (UDP) or a connection-oriented protocol such as Transmission Control Protocol (TCP)
• The port number used by the application or service running on the host

For example, the following identifier would represent a socket for the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) mail service running on a host with the specified IP address. (Port 25 is the well-known port number for the SMTP service on a TCP/IP host.)

172.16.8.55 (TCP port 25)

Web References

• Windows Sockets