Summary

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In this short introductory chapter, we’ve looked at some of the basics of communicating over the Internet using stream sockets and looked at a sample implementation of a simple server and client. The concept of sockets, ports, and addresses were discussed to provide additional framework to understand the relationship between the Sockets API and some features of the underlying protocols. The symmetry of client and server Sockets applications were discussed to better understand the relationships between some of the basic Sockets API functions. Finally, the issue of byte-ordering and computer architecture was identified and the Sockets API functions that can be used to build transparent and portable Sockets applications were discussed.

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