Book Image

Hands-On Network Programming with C

By : Lewis Van Winkle
Book Image

Hands-On Network Programming with C

By: Lewis Van Winkle

Overview of this book

Network programming enables processes to communicate with each other over a computer network, but it is a complex task that requires programming with multiple libraries and protocols. With its support for third-party libraries and structured documentation, C is an ideal language to write network programs. Complete with step-by-step explanations of essential concepts and practical examples, this C network programming book begins with the fundamentals of Internet Protocol, TCP, and UDP. You’ll explore client-server and peer-to-peer models for information sharing and connectivity with remote computers. The book will also cover HTTP and HTTPS for communicating between your browser and website, and delve into hostname resolution with DNS, which is crucial to the functioning of the modern web. As you advance, you’ll gain insights into asynchronous socket programming and streams, and explore debugging and error handling. Finally, you’ll study network monitoring and implement security best practices. By the end of this book, you’ll have experience of working with client-server applications and be able to implement new network programs in C. The code in this book is compatible with the older C99 version as well as the latest C18 and C++17 standards. You’ll work with robust, reliable, and secure code that is portable across operating systems, including Winsock sockets for Windows and POSIX sockets for Linux and macOS.
Table of Contents (26 chapters)
Title Page
Dedication
About Packt
Contributors
Preface
Index

The purpose of network monitoring


Network monitoring is a common IT term that has a broad implication. Network monitoring can refer to the practice, techniques, and tools used to provide insight into the status of a network. These techniques are used to monitor the availability and performance of networked systems and troubleshoot problems.

Some reasons you may want to practice network monitoring include the following:

  • To detect the reachability of networked systems
  • To measure the availability of networked systems
  • To determine the performance of networked systems
  • To inform decisions about network resource allocation
  • To aid in troubleshooting
  • To benchmark performance
  • To reverse engineer a protocol
  • To debug a program

In this chapter, we look at a small subset of conventional network monitoring techniques that may be useful when implementing networked programs.

When developing or deploying networked programs, it is often the case that you run into problems. When this happens, you are faced with two possibilities...