Windows System Programming, Fourth Edition

Chapter 12. Network Programming with Windows Sockets

Named pipes and mailslots are suitable for interprocess communication between processes on the same computer or processes on Windows computers connected by a local or wide area network. The client/server application system developed in Chapter 11, starting with Program 11-2, demonstrated these capabilities.

Named pipes and mailslots (both simply referred to here as “named pipes” unless the distinction is important) have the distinct drawback, however, of not being an industry standard. Therefore, programs such as those in Chapter 11 will not port easily to non-Windows machines, nor will they interoperate with non-Windows machines. This is the case even though named pipes are protocol-independent ...