Visual Basic 2005 for Programmers: Deitel Developer Series, Second Edition

23.2. Connection-Oriented vs. Connectionless Communication

There are two primary approaches to communicating between applications—connection oriented and connectionless. Connection-oriented communications are similar to the telephone system, in which a connection is established and held for the length of the session. Connectionless services are similar to the postal service, in which two letters mailed at the same time from the same place and to the same destination may actually take two dramatically different paths through the system and even arrive at different times, or not at all.

In a connection-oriented approach, computers send each other control information—through a technique called handshaking—to initiate an end-to-end connection. The ...