networking The Berkeley Unix mechansim for creating a

virtual connection between processes. Sockets interface

Unix's standard I/O with its network communication

facilities. They can be of two types, stream (bi-directional)

or datagram (fixed length destination-addressed messages).

The socket library function socket() creates a communications

end-point or socket and returns a file descriptor with which

to access that socket. The socket has associated with it a

socket address, consisting of a port number and the local

host's network address.