1.2.9. The Socket Library
In Unix operating systems, the software performing all the tasks and protocols described above is usually part of the kernel, and so it is in Linux. The programming interface most common in the Unix world is the Berkeley Socket Library . Its name derives from a popular analogy that views ports as sockets and connecting to a port as plugging in. It provides the bind call to specify a remote host, a transport protocol, and a service that a program can connect or listen to (using connect , listen , and accept ). The socket library is somewhat more general in that it provides not only a class of TCP/IP-based sockets (the AF_INET sockets), but also a class that handles connections local to the machine (the AF_UNIX class). Some implementations can also handle other classes, like the XNS (Xerox Networking System ) protocol or X.25.
In Linux, the socket library is part of the standard libc C library. It supports the AF_INET and AF_INET6 sockets for TCP/IP and AF_UNIX for Unix domain sockets. It also supports AF_IPX for Novell's network protocols, AF_X25 for the X.25 network protocol, AF_ATMPVC and AF_ATMSVC for the ATM network protocol and AF_AX25 , AF_NETROM , and AF_ROSE sockets for Amateur Radio protocol support. Other protocol families are being developed and will be added in time.
Notes
The shell is a command-line interface to the Unix operating system. It's similar to the DOS prompt in a Microsoft Windows environment, albeit much more powerful.
[2]
The Ethernet FAQ at http://www.faqs.org/faqs/LANs/ethernet-faq/ talks about this issue, and a wealth of detailed historical and technical information is available at Charles Spurgeon's Ethernet web site at http://wwwhost.ots.utexas.edu/ethernet/ .
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