Socket Programming

What is a socket?
Socket: An interface between an application process and transport layer
The application process can send/receive messages to/from another application process (local or remote)via a socket

Kameswari Chebrolu Dept. of Electrical Engineering, IIT Kanpur

In Unix jargon, a socket is a file descriptor an integer associated with an open file Types of Sockets: Internet Sockets, unix sockets, X.25 sockets etc
Internet sockets characterized by IP Address (4 bytes) and port number (2 bytes)

Socket Description

Types of Internet Sockets

Stream Sockets (SOCK_STREAM)
Connection oriented Rely on TCP to provide reliable two-way connected communication

Datagram Sockets (SOCK_DGRAM)

Rely on UDP Connection is unreliable

Background
Two types of Byte ordering
Network Byte Order: High-order byte of the number is stored in memory at the lowest address Host Byte Order: Low-order byte of the number is stored in memory at the lowest address Network stack (TCP/IP) expects Network Byte Order

Connection Oriented Protocol

Server
socket() bind() listen() accept() send() recv() close() recv() send() close() socket() connect()

Client

Conversions:
htons() - Host to Network Short htonl() - Host to Network Long ntohs() - Network to Host Short ntohl() - Network to Host Long

Connectionless Protocol
Server
socket() bind() socket() bind()

socket() -- Get the file descriptor

int socket(int domain, int type, int protocol);
domain should be set to AF_INET type can be SOCK_STREAM or SOCK_DGRAM set protocol to 0 to have socket choose the correct protocol based on type socket() returns a socket descriptor for use in later system calls or -1 on error

Client

recvfrom() sendto() close()

sendto() recvfrom() close()

socket structures
struct sockaddr: Holds socket address information for many types of sockets
struct sockaddr { unsigned short sa_family; //address family AF_xxx unsigned short sa_data[14]; //14 bytes of protocol addr }

Dealing with IP Addresses

int inet_aton(const char *cp, struct in_addr *inp); Example usage:
struct sockaddr_in my_addr; my_addr.sin_family = AF_INET; my_addr.sin_port = htons(MYPORT); inet_aton(10.0.0.5,&(my_addr.sin_addr)); memset(&(my_addr.sin_zero),'\0',8); inet_aton() gives non-zero on success and zero on failure To convert binary IP to string: inet_noa() printf(%s,inet_ntoa(my_addr.sin_addr));

struct sockaddr_in: A parallel structure that makes it easy to reference elements of the socket address
struct sockaddr_in { short int unsigned short int struct in_addr unsigned char } sin_family; sin_port; sin_addr; sin_zero[8]; // set to AF_INET // Port number // Internet address //set to all zeros

bind() - what port am I on?

Used to associate a socket with a port on the local machine
The port number is used by the kernel to match an incoming packet to a process

connect() - Hello!
Connects to a remote host int connect(int sockfd, struct sockaddr *serv_addr, int addrlen) sockfd is the socket descriptor returned by socket() serv_addr is pointer to struct sockaddr that contains information on destination IP address and port addrlen is set to sizeof(struct sockaddr) returns -1 on error At times, you don't have to bind() when you are using connect()

int bind(int sockfd, struct sockaddr *my_addr, int addrlen)

sockfd is the socket descriptor returned by socket() my_addr is pointer to struct sockaddr that contains information about your IP address and port addrlen is set to sizeof(struct sockaddr) returns -1 on error

my_addr.sin_port = 0; //choose an unused port at random my_addr.sin_addr.s_addr = INADDR_ANY; //use my IP addr

listen() - Call me please!

Waits for incoming connections int listen(int sockfd, int backlog);
sockfd is the socket file descriptor returned by socket() backlog is the number of connections allowed on the incoming queue listen() returns -1 on error Need to call bind() before you can listen()

accept() - Thank you for calling !

accept() gets the pending connection on the port you are listen()ing on int accept(int sockfd, void *addr, int *addrlen);
sockfd is the listening socket descriptor information about incoming connection is stored in addr which is a pointer to a local struct sockaddr_in addrlen is set to sizeof(struct sockaddr_in) accept returns a new socket file descriptor to use for this accepted connection and -1 on error

send() and recv() - Let's talk!

The two functions are for communicating over stream sockets or connected datagram sockets. int send(int sockfd, const void *msg, int len, int flags);
sockfd is the socket descriptor you want to send data to (returned by socket() or got with accept()) msg is a pointer to the data you want to send len is the length of that data in bytes set flags to 0 for now sent() returns the number of bytes actually sent (may be less than the number you told it to send) or -1 on error

send() and recv() - Let's talk!

int recv(int sockfd, void *buf, int len, int flags);
sockfd is the socket descriptor to read from buf is the buffer to read the information into len is the maximum length of the buffer set flags to 0 for now recv() returns the number of bytes actually read into the buffer or -1 on error If recv() returns 0, the remote side has closed connection on you

sendto() and recvfrom() - DGRAM style

int sendto(int sockfd, const void *msg, int len, int flags, const struct sockaddr *to, int tolen);
to is a pointer to a struct sockaddr which contains the destination IP and port tolen is sizeof(struct sockaddr)

close() - Bye Bye!

int close(int sockfd);
Closes connection corresponding to the socket descriptor and frees the socket descriptor Will prevent any more sends and recvs

int recvfrom(int sockfd, void *buf, int len, int flags, struct sockaddr *from, int *fromlen);
from is a pointer to a local struct sockaddr that will be filled with IP address and port of the originating machine fromlen will contain length of address stored in from

Miscellaneous Routines
int getpeername(int sockfd, struct sockaddr *addr, int *addrlen);
Will tell who is at the other end of a connected stream socket and store that info in addr

Miscellaneous Routines
struct hostent *gethostbyname(const char *name);
struct hostent { char *h_name; //official name of host char **h_aliases; //alternate names for the host int h_addrtype; //usually AF_NET int h_length; //length of the address in bytes char **h_addr_list; //array of network addresses for the host } #define h_addr h_addr_list[0]

int gethostname(char *hostname, size_t size);

Will get the name of the computer your program is running on and store that info in hostname

Example Usage:
struct hostent *h; h = gethostbyname(www.iitk.ac.in); printf(Host name : %s \n, h->h_name); printf(IP Address: %s\n,inet_ntoa(*((struct in_addr *)h->h_addr)));

Summary
Books: Sockets help application process to communicate with each other using standard Unix file descriptors Two types of Internet sockets: SOCK_STREAM and SOCK_DGRAM Many routines exist to help ease the process of communication

References
Unix Network Programming, volumes 1-2 by W. Richard Stevens. TCP/IP Illustrated, volumes 1-3 by W. Richard Stevens and Gary R. Wright Web Resources: Beej's Guide to Network Programming www.ecst.csuchico.edu/~beej/guide/net/