Learning Network Programming with Java

Asynchronous socket channels

Asynchronous communication involves making a request, and then proceeding with some other operation without having to wait for the request to be completed. This is referred to as non-blocking.

There are three classes used to support asynchronous channel operations:

• AsynchronousSocketChannel: This is a simple asynchronous channel to a socket
• AsynchronousServerSocketChannel: This is an asynchronous channel to a server socket
• AsynchronousDatagramChannel: This is a channel for a datagram-oriented socket

The read/write methods of the AsynchronousSocketChannel class are asynchronous. The AsynchronousServerSocketChannel class possesses an accept method, which returns an AsynchronousSocketChannel instance. This method is also asynchronous. ...