Other Supported Protocols

Chapter 4

Other Supported Protocols

To establish communication through Winsock, you must understand how to address a workstation using a particular protocol. In Chapter 3, we described how to do so using the IPv4 and IPv6 address families specifically. This chapter explains other protocols that Winsock supports—IrDA, IPX/SPX, NetBIOS, AppleTalk, and ATM—and how each protocol resolves an address specific to that family to an actual machine on the network. We'll cover only the basic knowledge necessary to form an address structure for each protocol family. Chapter 8 covers the registration and name resolution functions, which advertise a service of a given protocol family. (This is a bit different from just resolving a name.) See Chapter 8 for more details on the differences between straight name resolution and service advertising and resolution.

For each covered address family, we will discuss the basics of how to address a machine on a network. We will then create a socket for each family. In addition, we will cover the protocol-specific options for name resolution. For each protocol discussed, we present basic client and server examples on the companion CD.