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

Summary


In this chapter, we saw that programming with UDP sockets is somewhat easier than with TCP sockets. We learned that UDP sockets don't need the listen(), accept(), or connect() function calls. This is mostly because sendto() and recvfrom() deal with the addresses directly. For more complicated programs, we can still use the select() function to see which sockets are ready for I/O.

We also saw that UDP sockets are connectionless. This is in contrast to connection-oriented TCP sockets. With TCP, we had to establish a connection before sending data, but with UDP, we simply send individual packets directly to a destination address. This keeps UDP socket programming simple, but it can complicate application protocol design, and UDP does not automatically retry communication failures or ensure that packets arrive in order.

The next chapter, Chapter 5Hostname Resolution and DNS, is all about hostnames. Hostnames are resolved using the DNS protocol, which works over UDP. Move on to Chapter...