Go Cookbook

Chapter 16. Networking Recipes

16.0 Introduction

While individual computers are powerful in their own right in processing data and computing results, the real power of computers lies in connecting them to a computer network. When computers are networked, they can tap into each other’s strengths and capabilities, aggregate computing power, and distribute processing among each other such that complex problems can be split up and worked on separately.

Computer networks use network protocols to communicate with each other. Network protocols are often abstracted into different layers. For example, Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) describes seven layers of communication protocols—starting from the application layer at the top, followed by the presentation, session, transport, network, data link, and physical layers. The Internet Protocol suite, popularly known as TCP/IP, has only four layers, starting with the application layer, followed by the transport, internet, and link layers. TCP/IP predates OSI and is more commonly used, but either protocol suite is only an abstraction layer used to describe the network communications.

The application layer is, as the name suggests, the protocol layer that describes how applications talk to each other. Examples of protocols on this layer include HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) and File Transfer Protocol (FTP).

The transport layer describes how datagrams are sent and received. The two main protocols in this layer are Transmission Control ...