18.1. Network Servers
A server spends its lifetime waiting for messages and answering them. It may have to do some serious processing to construct those answers, such as accessing a database, but from a networking point of view it simply receives requests and sends responses.
Having said that, there is still more than one way to accomplish this. A server may respond to only one request at a time, or it may thread its responses. The former is easier to code, but the latter is better if many clients are trying to connect simultaneously.
It’s also conceivable that a server may be used to facilitate communication in some way between the clients. The classic examples are chat servers, game servers, and peer-to-peer file sharing.
18.1.1. A Simple ...
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