Getting Started with Sockets in the Internet Domain

This section provides some basic information for getting started with sockets in the internet domain:

• Use the socket() call to create a socket in the internet domain specifying PF_INET for the domain parameter.

• Use AF_INET for the address family.

• The following socket types are supported for the internet domain:

  • Datagram (SOCK_DGRAM)
    
  • Raw (SOCK_RAW)
    
  • Stream (SOCK_STREAM)
  The socket type is passed as a parameter to the socket() call. For additional information, see Socket Types and general socket programming concepts in Sockets General Programming Information.

Datagram sockets use the UDP protocol, stream sockets use the TCP protocol, and raw sockets can use the raw, ICMP, or IGMP protocols.

Use the network utility routines to get addresses with a given name (see TCP/IP-Specific Network Utility Routines for additional information).