sockets - TarisMajor/5143-OpSystems GitHub Wiki

A socket is an endpoint for sending or receiving data across a network. Sockets provide a standardized interface for network communication. They allow processes on different machines to communicate with each other over a network (or even within the same machine). Sockets can be used for both stream-based (TCP) and datagram-based (UDP) communication.

Inventor and Year of Invention

The concept of sockets was introduced in BSD Unix in the early 1980s as part of the development of the TCP/IP networking protocol stack.

Uses

Sockets are widely used for communication in distributed systems, where processes on different machines need to communicate:

Client-Server Applications: A client communicates with a server using a socket to send and receive requests or data. Web Communication: Web browsers and web servers communicate over HTTP using sockets.

Multiplayer Games: Game clients communicate with servers over sockets to exchange game state and player actions.

Examples Web Servers: A web server like Apache or Nginx communicates with clients over TCP sockets to handle HTTP requests. Networked Applications: A chat application uses sockets to send messages between users in real time.