Design and Implementation of the FreeBSD Operating System, The

Chapter 12. Network Communication

In this chapter, we study the internal structure of the network subsystem provided in FreeBSD. The networking facilities provide a framework within which many network architectures may coexist. A network architecture comprises a set of network-communication protocols, the protocol family; conventions for naming communication endpoints, the address family; and any additional facilities that may fall outside the realm of connection management and data transfer. Networking facilities are accessed through the socket abstraction described in Chapter 11. The network subsystem provides a general-purpose framework within which network services are implemented. These facilities include the following:

• A structured ...