Sockets
A socket can be thought of as a two-way pipe; it connects two end points and allows data to flow across the pipe from one end point to the other. As a technology, it was first implemented as a method for exposing the TCP/IP suite to calling applications. Today, most socket APIs are generic enough to be used for almost any interprocess communication request. From an application developer's point of view, a socket is something that can be “plugged into” to allow data to be sent from one endpoint to another.
Sockets are a core technology for programming applications that communicate across IP networks—if you program against the Winsock API or use the Winsock Control (an OCX) in Visual Basic 6, you are already familiar with sockets and what ...
Get Visual Basic® Programmer's Guide to the .NET Framework Class Library now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.
