Sockets

Sockets are a way to perform network communication through the OS. The two main types of sockets are stream sockets and datagram sockets. Stream sockets are used to provide two-way communication, while datagram sockets only provide one-way communication and can be unreliable. Stream sockets use Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), which ensures that the packets of data being sent along the network will arrive in sequence and without error to their destination. Datagram sockets use User Datagram Protocol (UDP), which is not actually a real connection, but only serves as a basic method to send data. Both of these protocols exist on the transport layer of the OSI model. If you would like to view how to work with sockets in C, please follow this link.