Learning Python Networking - Second Edition

Sockets introduction

Sockets are the basis of IP, but we can also use them to take advantage of it, that is, through sockets, we can make two applications communicate with each other. A socket in programming is a communication tunnel that helps two applications to communicate and are the basis of the internet and its protocols, such as HTTP, FTP, and SMTP.

This mechanism emerged in the early 80s with the Unix system at Berkeley, to provide a communication channel between processes and have the same functionality as communication by mail or telephone—that is, they allow a process to speak with another, even when they are in different machines. This interconnect feature makes the socket concept very useful.

For two applications to communicate, ...