Chapter 15. Unix Domain Protocols

Introduction

The Unix domain protocols are not an actual protocol suite, but a way of performing client/server communication on a single host using the same API that is used for clients and servers on different hosts. The Unix domain protocols are an alternative to the interprocess communication (IPC) methods described in Volume 2 of this series, when the client and server are on the same host. Details on the actual implementation of Unix domain sockets in a Berkeley-derived kernel are provided in part 3 of TCPv3.

Two types of sockets are provided in the Unix domain: stream sockets (similar to TCP) and datagram sockets (similar to UDP). Even though a raw socket is also provided, its semantics have never been documented, ...

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