TCP/IP Sockets in Java, 2nd Edition

Chapter 6. Under the Hood

Some of the subtleties of network programming are difficult to grasp without some understanding of the data structures associated with the socket implementation and certain details of how the underlying protocols work. This is especially true of TCP sockets (i.e., instances of Socket). This chapter describes some of what goes on under the hood when you create and use an instance of Socket or ServerSocket. (The initial discussion and Section 6.5 apply as well to DatagramSocket and MulticastSocket. Also, since each SocketChannel has an underlying Socket (and similarly for the other flavors of channels), the discussion applies to them as well. However, most of this chapter focuses on TCP sockets, that is, Socket and Server-Socket ...