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

Two types of sockets


Sockets come in two basic types—connection-oriented and connectionless. These terms refer to types of protocols. Beginners sometimes get confused with the term connectionless. Of course, two systems communicating over a network are in some sense connected. Keep in mind that these terms are used with special meanings, which we will cover shortly, and should not imply that some protocols manage to send data without a connection.

The two protocols that are used today are Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and User Datagram Protocol (UDP). TCP is a connection-oriented protocol, and UDP is a connectionless protocol.

The socket APIs also support other less-common or outdated protocols, which we do not cover in this book.

In a connectionless protocol, such as UDP, each data packet is addressed individually. From the protocol's perspective, each data packet is completely independent and unrelated to any packets coming before or after it.

A good analogy for UDP is postcards. When...