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Concept
Network socket
Summary
A network socket is a software structure within a network node of a computer network that serves as an endpoint for sending and receiving data across the network. The structure and properties of a socket are defined by an application programming interface (API) for the networking architecture. Sockets are created only during the lifetime of a process of an application running in the node.
Because of the standardization of the TCP/IP protocols in the development of the Internet, the term network socket is most commonly used in the context of the Internet protocol suite, and is therefore often also referred to as Internet socket. In this context, a socket is externally identified to other hosts by its socket address, which is the triad of transport protocol, IP address, and port number.
The term socket is also used for the software endpoint of node-internal inter-process communication (IPC), which often uses the same API as a network socket.
The use of the term socket in software is analogous to the function of an electrical female connector, a device in hardware for communication between nodes interconnected with an electrical cable. Similarly, the term port is used for external physical endpoints at a node or device.
The application programming interface (API) for the network protocol stack creates a handle for each socket created by an application, commonly referred to as a socket descriptor. In Unix-like operating systems, this descriptor is a type of . It is stored by the application process for use with every read and write operation on the communication channel.
At the time of creation with the API, a network socket is bound to the combination of a type of network protocol to be used for transmissions, a network address of the host, and a port number. Ports are numbered resources that represent another type of software structure of the node. They are used as service types, and, once created by a process, serve as an externally (from the network) addressable location component, so that other hosts may establish connections.
Official source
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Ontological neighbourhood
Related publications (34)
Related people (7)
Related concepts (17)
Port (computer networking)
In computer networking, a port or port number is a number assigned to uniquely identify a connection endpoint and to direct data to a specific service. At the software level, within an operating system, a port is a logical construct that identifies a specific process or a type of network service. A port at the software level is identified for each transport protocol and address combination by the port number assigned to it.
Port forwarding
In computer networking, port forwarding or port mapping is an application of network address translation (NAT) that redirects a communication request from one address and port number combination to another while the packets are traversing a network gateway, such as a router or firewall. This technique is most commonly used to make services on a host residing on a protected or masqueraded (internal) network available to hosts on the opposite side of the gateway (external network), by remapping the destination IP address and port number of the communication to an internal host.
Berkeley sockets
Berkeley sockets is an application programming interface (API) for Internet sockets and Unix domain sockets, used for inter-process communication (IPC). It is commonly implemented as a library of linkable modules. It originated with the 4.2BSD Unix operating system, which was released in 1983. A socket is an abstract representation (handle) for the local endpoint of a network communication path. The Berkeley sockets API represents it as a () in the Unix philosophy that provides a common interface for input and output to streams of data.