Network Streams

From its first days, Java, more than any other common programming language, has had the network in mind. Java is the first programming language to provide as much support for network I/O as it does for file I/O, perhaps even more (Java's URL, URLConnection, Socket, and ServerSocket classes are all fertile sources of streams). The exact type of the stream used by a network connection is typically hidden inside the undocumented sun classes. Thus, network I/O relies primarily on the basic InputStream and OutputStream methods, which you can wrap with any higher-level stream that suits your needs: buffering, cryptography, compression, or whatever your application requires.