Introduction to the Network Programming

Dr. Rahul Banerjee

Associate Professor: CS&IS Group
Software & Development & Educational Technology Unit
Birla Institute of Technology & Science, Pilani (India)
E-mail: [email protected]
Home: http://discovery.bits-pilani.ac.in/rahul/

1 (c) Dr. Rahul Banerjee, BITS-Pilani, India

 Network Programming Basics
Network Programming for different Software
Architectures
– Mainframe / Mid-range <Mini / Super-mini ranges
included> computing architectures
– PC-based <Workstations of all kinds included> File
Sharing based computing architectures
– Peer-to-Peer computing architectures
– Client/Server based computing architectures <two/three-
tier>
Network Programming through different methods:
– Serial Port Programming
– Parallel Port Programming
– NetBIOS Programming
– TCP/IP Programming
• BSD Socket API based
• System V TLI based
• WinSock based
– RPC Programming
2 (c) Dr. Rahul Banerjee, BITS-Pilani, India
 About Application Client / Server Processes
Definition of an Application Server Process:
• A process that provides any set of predefined services to
one or more requesting clients is called a Server Process.
Types of Application Server Processes:
• Concurrent Server Process
» A process that simultaneously provides any
set of predefined services to one or more
requesting clients is called a Concurrent
Server Process.
• Iterative Server Process
»
A process that provides any set of
predefined services to only one requesting
client at any point of time is called an
Iterative Server Process.
Definition of an Application Client Process:
• A process that solicits any specific service from any
designated server is called a Client Process.

3 (c) Dr. Rahul Banerjee, BITS-Pilani, India

 The IPv4 Class Scheme
In the IPv4, any address is 32-bit long and is
represented in four parts of one byte each
separated by decimal points or dots.
There exist two ways of looking at the IPv4 world:
• Class-based view
• A,
• B,
• C,
• D&E
• Classless view
The 32-bit address comprises of two parts:
• Network address / identifier
• Host address / identifier

4 (c) Dr. Rahul Banerjee, BITS-Pilani, India

 More on IP Classes
In the class-based / classful version, the classes
are designated based on the first few bits of
the Network Address portion of the IP
address.

For instance:
• If the first bit in this field is 0 (zero), it is
referred to as a Class-A IP address.
• If the first two bits in this field are 10 , it is
referred to as a Class-B IP address.
• If the first three bits in this field are 110 , it
is referred to as a Class-C IP address.

5 (c) Dr. Rahul Banerjee, BITS-Pilani, India

 Examples of IP Classes
Example of a Class-A address:
• 12.0.0.3
Here, 12 is the Network Address part whereas 0.0.3
is the Host Address part.
(Technically, this means: Network Address is
12.0.0.0 and the Host Address is 0.0.0.3.)
Example of a Class-B address:
• 180.16.0.1
Example of a Class-C address:
• 192.12.7.8

6 (c) Dr. Rahul Banerjee, BITS-Pilani, India

 IPv4 Class-range

Class-A Address Range:

1.0.0.0 - 127.255.255.255
Class-B Address Range:
128.0.0.0 - 191.255.255.255
Class-C Address Range:
192.0.0.0 - 223.255.255.255
Class-D Address Range:
224.0.0.0 - 239.255.255.255
Class-E Address Range:
240.0.0.0 - 247.255.255.255

7 (c) Dr. Rahul Banerjee, BITS-Pilani, India

 The IPv4 Header Structure

0 31
Ver. IHL Type of Service Total Length
Identification Flags Fragment Offset
TTL Protocol Type Header Checksum
Source Address (32-bit)
Destination Address (32-bit)
Options+Padding

8 (c) Dr. Rahul Banerjee, BITS-Pilani, India

 The TCP Header Structure
Source Port Number Destination Port Number
(16-bit) (16-bit)

Sequence Number (32-bit)

Acknowledgement Number (32-bit)

HLEN + Reserved + Code Sliding Window

TCP Checksum (16-bit) Urgent Pointer (16-bit)

Options (if present) + Padding )if needed)

Payload Data

9 (c) Dr. Rahul Banerjee, BITS-Pilani, India

 The UDP Header Structure

Source Port Number Destination Port Number

(16-bit) (16-bit)

Message Length UDP Checksum

(16-bit) (16-bit: Optional)

Payload Data

10 (c) Dr. Rahul Banerjee, BITS-Pilani, India

 About the TCP & UDP Ports
TCP and UDP Ports are 16-bit numbers.
They are of three types:
• Well-known Ports (0-1023: Controlled by the IANA),
• Registered Ports (1024-49159) and
• Ephemeral / Dynamic Ports (49152-65535). (RFC 1700
shows a list suggested initially)
FTP over TCP uses 21 whereas TFTP over UDP uses 69 for
instance.
X-Windows Server uses 6000-6063 Registered Ports.
For BSD, the scheme is as under:
• WKP: 1-1023
• Reserved Ports: 1024-5000
• Severs: 5001-65535 (no privilege)
For Solaris, these ranges vary again!

11 (c) Dr. Rahul Banerjee, BITS-Pilani, India

 Inside the TCP
• TCP stands for Transmission Control Protocol.
(RFC 793 by John Postel)
• It offers a Connection-oriented Transport
Service.
• Assumes the underlying IP-subnet as unreliable
and therefore takes care of reliability, flow
control and reordering of data units as per
requirement.
• Sends data to the IP Layer in MSS-sized blocks
or smaller, after prefixing a TCP header to each
such segment.
• Default value of the MSS is 536, in case the peer
at the other end does not specify a smaller value
to be used with it.
• MSS is normally of lesser than or equal to the
size of the MTU (for IPv4: 40, for IPv6: 60 ).
12 (c) Dr. Rahul Banerjee, BITS-Pilani, India
 Inside the TCP (Contd.)
• TCP requires that a TCP Client establishes a Full-
Duplex connection with a TCP Server (before any
real data could be exchanged between them). After
the data exchange is over, this connection has to be
explicitly Terminated.
• As the TCP provides a reliable service, it expects an
ACK to be received for the data transmitted by an
TCP-entity (Client or Server).
• If the ACK does not arrive within a Time-out period, it
retransmits the data and waits for a longer period of
time to receive an ACK.
• Even if after a certain number of such attempts the
data cannot be successfully transmitted, it gives up
further attempts and informs the Application Layer.
(Intermediate failures are not reported to the
Application, however!)
13 (c) Dr. Rahul Banerjee, BITS-Pilani, India
 Inside the TCP (Contd.)
• The maximum period for such retransmission-
attempts and associated wait-periods for a single
data unit, put together, may be anywhere between 4
Minutes to 10 Minutes, depending upon the TCP
implementation and Stack Configuration.
• Round-Trip Time (RTT) is automatically, dynamically,
computed between a Client-Server pair by a routine
internal to the TCP implementation.
• RTTs are always more for WANs than for LANs.
• TCP recognizes byte-boundaries and is thus a byte-
stream-oriented protocol.
• As it provides each of its Segments a Serial Number,
reordering, rejection of duplicate segments etc.
becomes possible.
• It uses Sliding Window Protocol for the purpose of
data transmission / reception / flow-control.

14 (c) Dr. Rahul Banerjee, BITS-Pilani, India

 The 3-Way Handshake in TCP
• TCP requires a Three-Way Handshake for the Connection-
Establishment.
• This is called so since a minimum of three data-units need to
be exchanged between a TCP Client and a TCP Server for
establishing a TCP connection.
• These packets may be SYN-I-Seq-No (C-to-S), SYN-Ini-Seq-
No (S-to-C) on which ACK-I+1-Seq-No piggybacks (S-to-C)
and lastly, ACK-Ini+1-Seq-No (C-to-S).
• SYN stands for Synchronize segment. It takes just 1-byte of
Sequence Number Space.
• In a similar way, Connection-Termination takes four data-units.
It takes place using FIN (Final Segment) and associated
ACK.Both sides send one FIN and one ACK to each-other, in
this case.
• SYN contains TCP options of MSS, Sliding Window Scaling
(Left-Shifting by 0 to 14 bits allows window-sizes of 64K to 1
GB) [RFC 1323 by Jacabson et al], Timestamp (for High-speed
connections) etc.
15 (c) Dr. Rahul Banerjee, BITS-Pilani, India
 The TCP/IP Access Points
• In a TCP/IP network, services offered by any layer can only be
used through parameter / data passing through the various
Service Access Points (SAPs) located on Layer-boundaries.
• TSAPs and NSAPs are two major examples of SAPs located
at the AL-TCP/UDP Layer-boundary and TCP/UDP-IP Layer-
boundary respectively.
• A typical example of an NSAP is an IP address.
• A typical example of a TSAP is an IP address
+ a 16-bit integer called as Port Number.
• Port Numbers permit unique identification of several
simultaneous processes using TCP / UDP.
• IETF’s RFC 1700 lists select IANA-suggested Port Number
Assignments.

16 (c) Dr. Rahul Banerjee, BITS-Pilani, India

 Network Programming
in Microsoft Windows environments

17 (c) Dr. Rahul Banerjee, BITS-Pilani, India

 Methods of Network Programming in MS-Windows

• Windows Network Programming support exists

for:
– TCP/IP (IETF’s)
– Named Pipe <FIFO>, <server creates a pipe and
awaits, allowing bi-directional data-flow>
– Mailslots <uni-directional guaranteed or non-
guaranteed data-flow, uses broadcast datagrams, can
be created by any process>
– IPX/SPX (Novell’s Netware is based on this stack)
– NetBEAU (NETBIOS Extended User Interface) <for
PC-based networking, exposes nterfaces for reading /
writing data, can be used for C/S or P2P, connection-
oriented or connection-less way>
– AppleTalk (Apple’s)
18 (c) Dr. Rahul Banerjee, BITS-Pilani, India
 Methods of Network Programming in MS-Windows

• Methods available:
• Windows NT Remote Procedure Call (RPC) <uses a
collection of libraries / tools with a focus on the
Application Procedure alone, targeting execution on
a remote machine, independent of transport
protocols>
• Windows Socket (WinSock) <uses Windows Socket
interface, extension of BSD Sockets, allows bi-
directional data-flow, upon completion of
asynchronous I/O, exports functions which transmit
messages to the relevant applications: feature fits
within the message-driven interface model of MS-
Windows>
• WinNet API <for over-the-MS-Windows-network
sharing of file-server / printer etc.>
19 (c) Dr. Rahul Banerjee, BITS-Pilani, India
 Network Programming
in Linux / UNIX and similar
environments

20 (c) Dr. Rahul Banerjee, BITS-Pilani, India

 The Sockets and Socket Pairs
• Socket is another name for the TSAP discussed
above. Thus, it comprises of IP Address+Port
Number. Sockets are often created by the socket()
system call.
• A Socket Pair refers to a set of socket endpoints at
the two communicating ends of a TCP/IP network.
Typically, a Socket-Pair, for TCP as well as UDP,
comprises of four components:
• IP Address-1 & Port Address/Number-1
• IP Address-2 & Port Address/Number-2
• In case of TCP, a Socket-pair typically uniquely
represents a TCP-connection (logical).

21 (c) Dr. Rahul Banerjee, BITS-Pilani, India

 Creating a Socket
• Every network protocol has its own definition of Network
Address.
• In C, a protocol implementation provides a
struct sockaddr
as the elementary form of a Network Address.

• A sample definition of struct sockaddr

» #include <sys/socket.h>

» struct sockaddr {
» unsigned short sa_family;
» char sa_data [MAXSOCKADDRDATA]
» }

22 (c) Dr. Rahul Banerjee, BITS-Pilani, India

 Creating a Socket …
• In UNIX and Linux, Sockets are created by the socket()
system call.
• This call returns a file descriptor for the Socket that is yet to
be initialized.
• Then the socket is initialized by binding it to a particular
protocol and address using the bind() system call.
• #include <sys/socket.h>
• int socket (int domain, int type, int protocol);
Here,
the parameter domain specifies the PF;
parameter type usually specifies either of SOCK_STREAM or
SOCK_DGRAM;
parameter protocol specifies the protocol to be used (0=> default
protocol associated).
• int bind (int sock, struct sockaddr * my_addr, int addrlen);

• Here, the parameter sock is the socket-in-question; parameter

sockaddr is the address of protocol; parameter addrlen is the
length of the address for the local end-point.

23 (c) Dr. Rahul Banerjee, BITS-Pilani, India

 Creating a Socket …
Next, listen() system call is executed for informing the system that the process is now ready to
allow other processes establish a connection to this socket at the specified end-point.
This step does not really establish a connection by itself, however!
Now, the accept () system call is made for accepting the connection requests.
accept () is a blocking call as it blocks until a process requests a connection. In case, the
socket has been marked as ‘non-blocking’ by the fcntl() call, accept() would return an
error if no process is requesting it for a connection.

#include <sys/socket.h>

int listen (int sock, int backlog);

Here,
the parameter sock is the socket-in-question;
parameter backlog is the number of connection requests that may be
pending on the socket before any further connection requests are
explicitly refused.
int accept (int sock, struct sockaddr * addr, int * addrlen);

The select () system call can also be made for determining if any connection request is
currently pending to a socket.
Similarly, a Client attempts to connect to a Client attempts to connect to a Server by creating a
socket, binding it to an address (optionally) and making the connect() call to the Server
at the known address.
24 (c) Dr. Rahul Banerjee, BITS-Pilani, India
 A Glimpse of Address and Protocol
Families for Various Stacks
Address Families:
Unix / Linux Domain: AF_UNIX
TCP/IPv4 Domain: AF_INET
TCP/IPv6 Domain: AF_INET6
Novell NetWare Domain: AF_IPX
AppleTalk Domain: AF_APPLETALK
Protocol Families:
Unix / Linux Domain: PF_UNIX
TCP/IPv4 Domain: PF_INET
TCP/IPv6 Domain: PF_INET6
Novell NetWare Domain: PF_IPX
AppleTalk Domain: PF_APPLETALK

25 (c) Dr. Rahul Banerjee, BITS-Pilani, India

 The IP Socket Address Structure
struct in_addr {
in_addr_t s_addr; /* Big Endian 32-bit IP address */
};
struct sockaddr_in {
uint8_t sin_len; /* 16-byte structure length */
sa_family_t sin_family; /* AF_INET */
in_port_t sin_port; /* 16-bit Big Endian TL Port */
struct in_addr sin_addr; /* 32-bit Big Endian IP address*/
char sin_zero [8];
}
/* This is defined in netinet/in.h file. */

26 (c) Dr. Rahul Banerjee, BITS-Pilani, India

 On the Byte-ordering and Byte-
manipulation Functions
The term Byte-ordering refers to the manner in which a multi-
byte / multi-octet number / field is stored in Lower-order (i.e.
starting address) and Higher-order Memory Addresses.
If the Lower-order Byte is stored in the Starting / Lower-order
Memory Location and Higher-order Memory Location, then
it is called the Little Endian scheme.
If the storage is carried out in exactly opposite manner, it is
called the Big Endian scheme.
Different manufacturers may choose any one of these Byte-
ordering Schemes. For instance, traditionally, Motorola
processors have followed the Big Endian scheme whereas
the Intel processors have used the Little Endian scheme.
The Network Byte-order is always Big Endian, by convention
whereas the Host Byte-order may be of either type.
None of these two schemes is superior or inferior to the other
since they merely represent two possible ways in which
Lower and Higher Order Bytes are stored into and retrieved
from Memory or transferred over a network link.
27 (c) Dr. Rahul Banerjee, BITS-Pilani, India
 On the Byte-ordering and Byte-manipulation
Functions (Contd.)
Over a network, between any two nodes, data transfer takes place in Big
Endian manner.
There are standard function prototypes for ‘Host-Byte-order to Network-
Byte-order’ conversion and ‘Network-Byte-order to Host-Byte-
order’ conversion. These functions are defined in the netinet/in.h
header file in the systems supporting Socket Programming in C
and its variations. Their usage has been shown below:
#include <netinet/in.h>
uint16_t htons (uinit16_t 16-bit-host-address)
uint32_t htonl (uinit32_t 32-bit-host-address)
uint16_t ntohs (uinit16_t 16-bit-network-address)
uint32_t ntohl (uinit32_t 32-bit-network-address)
There exist two categories of functions those are capable of operating
on multi-byte / multi-octet numbers / fields.
The first category has BSD functions like bcopy, bzero etc. Functions
belonging to this category begin with ‘b’ (b=> byte).
The second category has ANSI-C functions like memset, memcpy etc.
Functions belonging to this category begin with ‘mem’ (mem=>
memory). Both types are defined in the header files strings.h and
string.h respectively.

28 (c) Dr. Rahul Banerjee, BITS-Pilani, India

 On the Functions used for Address
Conversions
A few functions used for IPv4 Address conversion from / to ASCII
string and Binary strings expressed in the Network Byte-order
have been defined in arpa/inet.h header file. These include:
inet_pton, inet_ntop, inet_aton, inet_ntoa, inet_addr etc.
Here, inet=> internet, a=> ASCII, n=> network, addr=> address, ntoa
and aton refer to network to ASCII and ASCII to network
respectively.
The first two of these functions can handle IPv4 as well as IPv6
addresses and are therefore commonly used these days since
majority of implementions attempt to offer dual-stack
compatibility.
It is advisable to avoid use of inet_addr, inet_aton and inet_ntoa as
these have known problems as well as are considered
deprecated. In near future, they may not be supported.
Using the preferred functions:
#include <arpa/inet.h>
int inet_pton ( int <addr-family>, const char *<strptr>, void
*<addrptr> );
const char *inet_ntop ( <addr-family>, const void *<addrptr>, char
*<strptr>, size_t <len> );
/* Here, addr-family may be AF_INET or AF_INET6 whichever needed. */

29 (c) Dr. Rahul Banerjee, BITS-Pilani, India

 On the Functions used for Address
Conversions (Contd.)
As may be noticed in the syntax, inet_ntop requires char *<strptr>,
this in turn requires to get the binary address that is stored as a
part of a Socket Address Structure. This would mean some
degree of protocol dependence of the function to be written
since the programmer must know the said structure beforehand.

const char *inet_ntop ( <addr-family>, const void *<addrptr>,

char *<strptr>, size_t <len> );

This problem may be easily taken care of if the programmer writes his
own function that extracts this data and its presentation format
and supplies it to the standard function.
There are numerous other similar situations in which such custom-
built functions, if written by the programmer, increase the level
of protocol independence of the resulting code. This, however,
comes with its own overheads and may not be a preferable
approach where speed and efficiency are the primary
requirements.

30 (c) Dr. Rahul Banerjee, BITS-Pilani, India

 On the Functions used for I/O Operations on Stream
Sockets and POSIX-compliant Status Information
Two points are important whenever a programmer wishes to perform
various read and write operations on Stream Sockets. (Stream
here refers to Byte Stream as in case of TCP Sockets.)
• A read operation or a write operation, even without an
error, may read or write lesser number of bytes than
explicitly mentioned particularly when a Buffer gets full.
This does not mean that inaccurate result needs to be
accepted; instead, it simply requires that the function is
called again in order to read or write the rest of the bytes
subsequently.
• This may happen during all read as well as all non-
blocking write operations.
The fstat function has been used traditionally for getting the
information about any specified descriptor. This function, along
with others has a prototype in the sys/stat.h header file.
Another function isfdtype has been more common in use of late. This
is used as follows:
#include <sys/stat.h>
int isfdtype (int <sock-fd>, int <fd-type>);
Here, fd=> file descriptor.

31 (c) Dr. Rahul Banerjee, BITS-Pilani, India

 The TCP/IP Tips
Syntax of the socket function that is required to create an end-point
has been discussed earlier as:
#include <sys/socket.h>
int socket (int <add-family or proto-family>, int <socket-type>, int
<protocol>);
Unlike the Server, described earlier, the Client need not invoke the
bind function call. In case of TCP over IPv4, this function, as
discussed before, assigns a 32-bit+16-bit address to a Socket
created by the socket call. Server processes normally prefer to
be assigned a standard-convention-based port called Well
Known Port. Whenever used, syntax of the function call is is:
int bind (int <sock-fd>, const struct sockaddr *<assigned-addr>,
socklen_t <addr-len>);
Syntax of the connect function that is needed by a Client to initiate a
connection-request to a Server is:
int connect (int <sock-fd>, const struct sockaddr *<server-addr>,
socklen_t <addr-len>);

32 (c) Dr. Rahul Banerjee, BITS-Pilani, India

 The TCP/IP Tips (Contd.)
Just like bind, another function that is never invoked by the
Client is the listen function. Syntax of the listen function
that is required to make an unconnected Active Socket of a
Server process behave as a Passive Socket entity has
been discussed earlier as:
#include <sys/socket.h>
int listen (int <sock-fd>, int <composite-connect-queue-len>);
Where, composite-connect-queue-len=> sum of
complete+incomplete connection queues.
Like bind and listen, another function that is called only by the
Server is the function accept. As shown earlier, its syntax
is:
#include <sys/socket.h>
int accept (int <sock-fd>, struct sockaddr *<client-addr>,
socklen_t *<addr--len>);
33 (c) Dr. Rahul Banerjee, BITS-Pilani, India
 Tips on Programming a Concurrent
Server
Under UNIX and Linux environments, typically, the only available way to
create a new process is by invoking the fork function that creates
a Child Process. This function returns twice per invocation – once
in the Parent Process that invoked it and thereafter in the created
Child process. The first time it returns a value to the Parent that is
actually the PID of the Child and second time it returns a value of
zero to the Child.
Syntax of its usage is:
#include <unistd.h>
pid_t fork(void);
Interestingly, this function can be used for a different reason altogether,
i.e. it can be used in association with the exec function whenever
it is desired that a given process must invoke another process. In
this case, first a replica / child process is created by the fork call
which then replaces itself with the process named as an argument
to the exec function call. The exec has six variations (?).
Syntax of use of exec is:
int exec?(const char *<file-or-path-name>, <argument-list>, <…
>);

34 (c) Dr. Rahul Banerjee, BITS-Pilani, India

 Tips on Programming a Concurrent Server
(Contd.)
Steps involved in writing a simple Concurrent Server are:
• Create a routine that creates a Socket, binds it to a well known
address, changes it to listen mode and waits for a connection
request at this address from a Client. (socket+bind+listen thus
form Step One!)
• Once a connection request is received, based on the queuing
status, this routine has to ensure that following events occur:
• The accept call returns,
• The fork call is used to spawn a Child,
• Let the Child close the listening Socket, service the Client
etc. While in the mean time, the Parent returns to its
passive (‘listening’) status and awaits the next request.
• Once the Child has serviced the Client, it closes all open
descriptors and exits,
• Finally, the routine must ensure that the Parent closes the
connected Socket. This completes the cycle.
• Syntax for a UNIX / Linux close is:
#include <unistd.h>
int close (int <sock-fd>);

35 (c) Dr. Rahul Banerjee, BITS-Pilani, India

 A Few More Functions of Importance
Certain other functions of relevance include:
ioctl, fcntl, recvfrom, sendto, signal,
select, poll, shutdown, pselect,
getsockname, getpeername, getsocketopt,
setsocketopt,
gethostbyname, gethostbyname2, gethostbyaddr,
uname,
gethostname, getservbyname, getservbyport,
getaddrinfo, getnameinfo
gai_strerror, freeaddrinfo

36 (c) Dr. Rahul Banerjee, BITS-Pilani, India

 Summary
In TCP/IP setup, services specific to any layer can only be
accessed through Service Access Points located at the
layer-boundaries.
A TSAP is an IP address+ a 16-bit Port Number.
Typically, a Socket-Pair, for TCP as well as UDP, comprises of
Server IP Address, Port Address / Number of the Server,
Client IP Address, Port Address / Number of the Client.
In case of TCP, a Socket-pair typically uniquely represents a
TCP-connection.
Each network protocol may have its own definition of Network
Address.
The Network Byte-order is always Big Endian, by convention
whereas the Host Byte-order may be of either type.
functions used for IPv4 Address conversion from / to ASCII
string and Binary strings expressed in the Network Byte-
order have been defined in arpa/inet.h header file. These
include: inet_pton, inet_ntop, inet_aton, inet_ntoa,
inet_addr etc.

37 (c) Dr. Rahul Banerjee, BITS-Pilani, India

 Summary (Contd.)
Under UNIX and Linux environments, typically, the only available
way to create a new process is by invoking the fork function
that creates a Child Process. This function returns twice per
invocation – once in the Parent Process that invoked it and
thereafter in the created Child process.
The function fork can be used in association with the exec
function whenever it is desired that a given process must
invoke another process.
Commonly used functions include socket, bind, listen, connect,
accept, close, getsockname, getpeername, select, poll,
shutdown, pselect, getsocketopt, sesocketopt, ioctl, fcntl,
recvfrom, sendto, signal, gethostbyname, gethostbyname2,
gethostbyaddr, uname, gethostname, getservbyname,
getservbyport, getaddrinfo, gai_strerror, freeaddrinfo,
getnameinfo.
If you know how to write a Client-Server pair for TCP-based
application, we may easily identify the distinctly simple
alterations that we may need to make in this code if we ever
need to write a code for UDP-based application.

38 (c) Dr. Rahul Banerjee, BITS-Pilani, India

 Summary of a Quick tour to basics

Every network A sample definition of

struct sockaddr
protocol has its own
definition of Network
#include
Address. <sys/socket.h>
In C, a protocol
implementation struct sockaddr {
provides a unsigned short
struct sockaddr sa_family;
as the elementary char sa_data
[MAXSOCKADDRD
form of a Network ATA]
Address. }

39 (c) Dr. Rahul Banerjee, BITS-Pilani, India

 Summary of a Quick tour to basics

In Linux, sockets are #include <sys/socket.h>

created by the socket()
int socket (int domain, int type, int
system call. protocol);
Here,
This call returns a file the parameter domain specifies the PF;
descriptor for the socket parameter type usually specifies either of
SOCK_STREAM or SOCK_DGRAM;
that is yet to be parameter protocol specifies the protocol
initialized. to be used (0=> default protocol
associated).
Then the socket is int bind (int sock, struct sockaddr *
my_addr, int addrlen);
initialized by binding it to Here,
a particular protocol and the parameter sock is the socket-in-
question;
address using the bind() parameter sockaddr is the address of
system call. protocol;
parameter addrlen is the length of the
address for the local end-point.

40 (c) Dr. Rahul Banerjee, BITS-Pilani, India

 Summary of a Quick tour to basics
Next, listen() system call is executed #include <sys/socket.h>
for informing the system that the
process is now ready to allow other
processes establish a connection to int listen (int sock, int backlog);
this socket at the specified end-point. Here,
This step does not really establish a the parameter sock is the socket-in-
connection by itself, however! question;
Now, the accept () system call is made parameter backlog is the number of
for accepting the connection connection requests that may be
requests. pending on the socket before any
accept () is a blocking call as it blocks further connection requests are
until a process requests a connection. explicitly refused.
In case, the socket has been marked
as ‘non-blocking’ by the fcntl() call, int accept (int sock, struct
accept() would return an error if no sockaddr * addr, int * addrlen);
process is requesting it for a The select () system call can also
connection. be made for determining if any
A Client attempts to connect to a connection request is currently
Client attempts to connect to a Server pending to a socket.
by creating a socket, binding it to an
address (optionally) and making the
connect() call to the Server at the
known address.

41 (c) Dr. Rahul Banerjee, BITS-Pilani, India

 References
1. W. R. Stevens: UNIX Network Programming, Vols. 1-2,
ISE, Addison-Wesley, Mass.
2. Alok K. Sinha: Network Programming in Windows NT,
Addison-Wesley, Mass.
3. W. R. Stevens: TCP/IP, Vol. 1, Addison-Wesley, Mass.
4. D. Comer: Internetworking with TCP / IP , Vol.-1, PHI.
5. D. Comer & D. L. Stevens: Internetworking with
TCP /IP, Vol.. 2-3, PHI.
6. M. K. Johnson and E. W. Troan: Linux Application
Development, ISE, Addison-Wesley.
7. Rahul Banerjee: Lecture Notes in Computer
Networking, BITS-Pilani.

42 (c) Dr. Rahul Banerjee, BITS-Pilani, India

 Some interesting commands
• Linux / Unix:
• ps
• Ipconfig
• Netstat
• ping
• Windows:
• tlist /t
• Qslice
• Ifconfig
• Netstat
• ping
43 (c) Dr. Rahul Banerjee, BITS-Pilani, India