Network Programming

BITS Pilani K Hari Babu

Pilani Campus Department of Computer Science & Information Systems
 BITS Pilani
Pilani Campus

TCP/IP
OSI & Internet protocol suite

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Network Programming by Dr. K Hari Babu, CSIS Dept. BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
TCP/IP

Network Programming by Dr. K Hari Babu, CSIS Dept. BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
TCP or UDP
• At the internet layer, a destination address
identifies a host computer; no further distinction
is made regarding which process will receive the
datagram
• TCP or UDP add a mechanism that
distinguishes among destinations within a given
host, allowing multiple processes to send and
receive datagrams independently

Network Programming by Dr. K Hari Babu, CSIS Dept. BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
Why process is not the destination for a
message?
• Processes are created and destroyed dynamically
• A process can be repalced with a new process
without informing all senders
• Identify a destination by the function rather than
the process which implements it
• A process can handle multiple functions, so there
should a way to specify which one sender desires

Network Programming by Dr. K Hari Babu, CSIS Dept. BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
Protocol Ports
• Instead of thinking process as ultimate
destination, imagine that each machine contains
a set of abstract destination points called
protocol ports
• Each protocol port is identified by a positive
integer
• Operating systems provide some mechanism
that processes use, to specify a port.

Network Programming by Dr. K Hari Babu, CSIS Dept. BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
Port Numbers
• The port numbers are divided into three ranges by
Internet Assigned Numbers Authority
• The well-known ports: 0 through 1023. These port
numbers are controlled and assigned by the IANA.
• The registered ports: 1024 through 49151. These are not
controlled by the IANA, but the IANA registers and lists
the uses of these ports as a convenience to the
community.
• The dynamic or private ports, 49152 through 65535. The
IANA says nothing about these ports. These are what we
call ephemeral ports. (49152 is three-fourths of 65536.)

Network Programming by Dr. K Hari Babu, CSIS Dept. BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
Ports

Network Programming by Dr. K Hari Babu, CSIS Dept. BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
UDP (User Datagram Protocol)

• UDP provides an unreliable

connectionless delivery service
• UDP uses IP to deliver datagrams to the
right host.
• UDP uses ports to provide communication
services to individual processes.

Network Programming by Dr. K Hari Babu, CSIS Dept. BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
UDP header

• Header size is 8 bytes

• Lack of reliability:
– checksum detects an error
– the datagram is dropped in the network
• If we want to be certain that a datagram reaches its destination, we
can build lots of features into our application: acknowledgments from
the other end, timeouts, retransmissions, and the like.

Network Programming by Dr. K Hari Babu, CSIS Dept. BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
Some standard UDP based services and their
ports

Network Programming by Dr. K Hari Babu, CSIS Dept. BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
 TCP
Transmission Control Protocol
• TCP provides connections between clients and
servers.
• TCP uses the connection, not the protocol port,
as its fundamental abstraction.
• Connections are identified by a pair of endpoints.
– Endpoint means (ip, port)
• TCP provides:
– Connection-oriented
– Reliable
– Full-duplex
– Byte-Stream

Network Programming by Dr. K Hari Babu, CSIS Dept. BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
Connection-Oriented
• Connection oriented means that a virtual connection is
established before any user data is transferred.
• A TCP client establishes a connection with a given
server, exchanges data with that server across the
connection, and then terminates the connection.
• If the connection cannot be established - the user
program is notified.
• If the connection is ever interrupted - the user
program(s) is notified.

Network Programming by Dr. K Hari Babu, CSIS Dept. BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
TCP Ports
• Interprocess communication via TCP is
achieved with the use of ports (just like
UDP).
• UDP ports have no relation to TCP ports
(different name spaces).

Network Programming by Dr. K Hari Babu, CSIS Dept. BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
TCP Segments
• TCP views the data stream as a sequence of
bytes that it divides into segments for
transmission. Segments carry varying sizes of
data.
• The chunk of data that TCP asks IP to deliver is
called a TCP segment.
• Each segment contains:
– data bytes from the byte stream
– control information that identifies the data bytes

Network Programming by Dr. K Hari Babu, CSIS Dept. BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
TCP Segment Format

Network Programming by Dr. K Hari Babu, CSIS Dept. BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
TCP Segments
• Segments are exchanged to establish connections,
transfer data, send acknowledgements, advertise
window sizes, and close connections.
• Because TCP uses piggybacking, acknowledgement can
be sent along with data
• TCP advertises how much data it is willing to accept
every time it sends segment by specifying its buffer size
in the WINDOW field

Network Programming by Dr. K Hari Babu, CSIS Dept. BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
TCP Connection Establishment
• Three-way handshake
• It accomplishes two important functions.
– It guarantees that both sides are ready to transfer data (and
that they know they are both ready)
– it allows both sides to agree on initial sequence numbers.
• Sequence numbers are sent and acknowledged during
the handshake. Each machine must choose an initial
sequence number at random that it will use to identify
bytes in the stream it is sending.

Network Programming by Dr. K Hari Babu, CSIS Dept. BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
TCP Connection Establishment

• When a client requests a connection, it sends a “SYN”

segment (a special TCP segment) to the server port.
• SYN stands for synchronize. The SYN message includes
the client’s ISN.
• ISN is Initial Sequence Number.
• Every TCP segment includes a Sequence Number that
refers to the first byte of data included in the segment.
• Every TCP segment includes a Request Number
(Acknowledgement Number) that indicates the byte
number of the next data that is expected to be received.
– All bytes up through this number have already been received.

Network Programming by Dr. K Hari Babu, CSIS Dept. BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
TCP Connection Establishment
• A server accepts a connection.
 Must be looking for new connections!
• A client requests a connection.
 Must know where the server is!

• A client starts by sending a SYN segment with the following

information:
 Client’s ISN (generated pseudo-randomly)
 Maximum Receive Window for client.
 Optionally (but usually) MSS (largest datagram accepted).
 No payload! (Only TCP headers)
• When a waiting server sees a new connection request, the server
sends back a SYN segment with:
 Server’s ISN (generated pseudo-randomly)
 Request Number is Client ISN+1
 Maximum Receive Window for server.
 Optionally (but usually) MSS
 No payload! (Only TCP headers)
Network Programming by Dr. K Hari Babu, CSIS Dept. BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
TCP Connection Establishment

Network Programming by Dr. K Hari Babu, CSIS Dept. BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
Connection Termination
• The TCP layer can send a RST segment that terminates
a connection if something is wrong.
• Usually the application tells TCP to terminate the
connection gracefully with a FIN segment.
• Either end of the connection can initiate termination.
• A FIN is sent, which means the application is done
sending data.
• The FIN is ACK’d.
• The other end must now send a FIN.
• That FIN must be ACK’d.

Network Programming by Dr. K Hari Babu, CSIS Dept. BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
Connection Termination

Network Programming by Dr. K Hari Babu, CSIS Dept. BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
TCP Connection State Diagram

• There are 11 different states defined for a

connection
– based on the current state and the segment received
in that state.
• One reason for showing the state transition
diagram is to show the 11 TCP states with their
names. These states are displayed by netstat,
which is a useful tool when debugging
client/server applications

Network Programming by Dr. K Hari Babu, CSIS Dept. BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
Network Programming by Dr. K Hari Babu, CSIS Dept. BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
Network Programming by Dr. K Hari Babu, CSIS Dept. BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
What is the purpose of TIME_WAIT?
• Once a TCP connection has been terminated
(the last ACK sent) there is some unfinished
business:
– What if the ACK is lost? The last FIN will be resent
and it must be ACK’d.
– What if there are lost or duplicated segments that
finally reach the incarnation of the previous
connection after a long delay?
• The MSL is the maximum amount of time that
any given IP datagram can live in a network

Network Programming by Dr. K Hari Babu, CSIS Dept. BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
Outline
• Sockets
• TCP Client Server

Network Programming by Dr. K Hari Babu, CSIS Dept. BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
 BITS Pilani
Pilani Campus

Sockets
OSI & Internet protocol suite

31
Network Programming by Dr. K Hari Babu, CSIS Dept. BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
TCP/IP & Sockets API
• TCP/IP does not include an API definition.
• There are a variety of APIs for use with TCP/IP:
o Sockets
o TLI, XTI
o Winsock
o MacTCP
• API should have the following functionalities
o Specify local and remote communication endpoints
o Initiate a connection
o Wait for incoming connection
o Send and receive data
o Terminate a connection gracefully
o Error handling

Network Programming by Dr. K Hari Babu, CSIS Dept. BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
Berkeley Sockets API
• First appeared in 42. BSD in 1983.
o Supported on every UNIX variant.
o WinSock API also follows socket API.
• Generic API:
o support for multiple communication domains which differ in
addressing methods.

• Uses existing I/O programming interface as much as

possible.
o Socket API is similar to file I/O
Network Programming by Dr. K Hari Babu, CSIS Dept. BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
Socket
• A socket is an abstract representation of a communication
endpoint.
• Sockets work with Unix I/O services just like files, pipes &
FIFOs.
o read(), write() and close() sys calls work on sockets also
• Sockets have special needs over files:
o establishing a connection.
o specifying communication endpoint addresses.

Network Programming by Dr. K Hari Babu, CSIS Dept. BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
Socket Types
• Two types of sockets
o Stream Sockets
 Reliable
 Bidirectional
 Byte-stream
 Connection-oriented
 Stream sockets operate in connected pairs. (local end point, remote
end point)
 Internet Domain: TCP Socket
o Datagram Sockets
 Message boundaries are preserved.
 No reliability support: out of order, duplicates, or lost datagrams
 Connectionless socket: no need to be connected to another socket.
 Internet Domain: UDP Socket

Network Programming by Dr. K Hari Babu, CSIS Dept. BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
Socket Descriptor Data Structure

Network Programming by Dr. K Hari Babu, CSIS Dept. BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
Internet Domain & Sockets
• Endpoint is identified by ip address and port number.
o A socket needs to be bound to endpoints local and remote.

Network Programming by Dr. K Hari Babu, CSIS Dept. BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
Socket Pair
• The socket pair for a TCP connection is the four-tuple that
defines the two endpoints of the connection:
o the local IP address, local port, foreign IP address, and foreign port.
• A socket pair uniquely identifies every TCP connection on a
network.
• We can extend the concept of a socket pair to UDP, even
though UDP is connectionless.
• TCP connection for a ftp server:
o Server has two IP interfaces. * indicates any ip address/any port.

Network Programming by Dr. K Hari Babu, CSIS Dept. BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
TCP Connection
• A client 206.168.112.219 connects to 12.106.32.254 at port
21.

• Server creates a child to handle new cleint.

o See the new TCP connection pair on server.

Network Programming by Dr. K Hari Babu, CSIS Dept. BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
TCP Connection
• Client opens one more connection to the same server.
What makes it a different TCP connection?

Network Programming by Dr. K Hari Babu, CSIS Dept. BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
Writing to TCP Socket

Network Programming by Dr. K Hari Babu, CSIS Dept. BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
Writing to UDP Socket

Network Programming by Dr. K Hari Babu, CSIS Dept. BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
Creating a Socket

• Domain argument specifies the communication domain.

• Type argument specifies the socket type
• Protocol is usually 0. Its value is automatically from first two
arguments.
o But for raw sockets, protocol value can be specified.
• The socket() system call returns a socket descriptor
(small integer) or -1 on error.
• socket() allocates resources needed for a
communication endpoint - but it does not deal with endpoint
addressing.

Network Programming by Dr. K Hari Babu, CSIS Dept. BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
Specifying an Endpoint Address
• Remember that the sockets API is generic.
• There must be a generic way to specify endpoint
addresses.
• Internet Domain requires an IP address and a port number
for each endpoint address.
• Other domains (families) may use other schemes.
• Data types for specifying address structure

Network Programming by Dr. K Hari Babu, CSIS Dept. BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
Generic Socket Address Structure

• General socket address structure acts as template.

• All sys calls take this as the input.

• For IPv4 domain, socket address structure is

Network Programming by Dr. K Hari Babu, CSIS Dept. BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
Specifying End Point Address
o Bind call binds an address to a socket

o Bind is used to bind the socket to a local end point.

 addr is the pointer to an address structure that contains the endpoint
address.
process specifies result
IP address port
Wildcard 0 kernel chooses IP addr and port
Wild card nonzero kernel chooses IP, process specifies
port
local IP 0 process specifies IP, kernel chooses
addr port
local IP nonzero process specifies IP and port
addr

Wildcard specified as INADDR_ANY

Network Programming by Dr. K Hari Babu, CSIS Dept. BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
Byte Order
• Different hardware architectures in the network. Passing
integers across the network needs to be in standard format:
Network Byte Order (NBO): bigendian byte order.

Network Programming by Dr. K Hari Babu, CSIS Dept. BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
Network Byte Order Functions

‘h’ : host byte order ‘n’ : network byte order

‘s’ : short (16bit) ‘l’ : long (32bit)

Network Programming by Dr. K Hari Babu, CSIS Dept. BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
bind() Example

• Note the usage of byte conversion.

• Nit the casting internet domain address to generic address
structure.
• There are a number of uses for bind():
• Server would like to bind to a well known address (port number).
• Client can bind to a specific port.
• Client can ask the O.S. to assign any available port number.

Network Programming by Dr. K Hari Babu, CSIS Dept. BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
IPv4 Address Conversion
• The inet_pton() and inet_ntop() functions allow conversion
of both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses between binary form and
dotted-decimal or hex-string notation.
• The p in the names of these functions stands for
“presentation,” and the n stands for “network.” The
presentation form is a human-readable string.

Network Programming by Dr. K Hari Babu, CSIS Dept. BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
 BITS Pilani
Pilani Campus

Client Server Programming

Active & Passive Sockets
• By default, a socket that has been created using socket() is
active.
o An active socket can be used in a connect() call to establish a
connection to a passive socket.
o This is referred to as performing an active open.
• A passive socket (also called a listening socket) is one that
has been marked to allow incoming connections by calling
listen().
o Accepting an incoming connection is referred to as performing a
passive open.
• client:
o which does active socket open
• Server:
o which does passive socket open.
Network Programming by Dr. K Hari Babu, CSIS Dept. BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
TCP Client Server
Server
socket()

bind() “well-known”
port
listen()
Client
accept()
socket()
(Block until connection) “Handshake”
connect()
Data (request)
write()
read()
Data (reply)
write()
read()
End-of-File close()
read()

• close()
Diagram Source: sjsu.edu Network Programming by Dr. K Hari Babu, CSIS Dept. BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
 TCP Client

PF_INET
PF_INET6 STREAM 0, used by
PF_UNIX DGRAM RAW socket
PF_X25 RAW

sd = socket (family, type, protocol);

family

port
ephemeral port three way
addr ip addr
(routing)
sd = connect (sd, server_addr, addr_len); handshaking

Server

CONNECT actions
write (sd, *buff, mbytes); PORT#
IP-ADDR
1. socket is valid
2. fill remote endpoint addr/port
3. choose local endpoint add/port read (sd, *buff, mbytes);
4. initiate 3-way handshaking

disconnect
close (sd); sequence

• Diagram Source: sjsu.edu

Network Programming by Dr. K Hari Babu, CSIS Dept. BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
TCP Server

LISTEN sd = socket (family, type, protocol);

family SOCKET

port well-known port #

INADDR_ANY
addr bind port # bind (sd, *server_addr, len);

1. Turn sd from
listen (sd, backlog); active to passive
2. Queue length

family

port
CONNECT
SOCKET ssd = accept (sd, *cliaddr, *len); three way
handshaking
addr

read (ssd, *buff, mbytes);

closes socket for R/W
non-blocking
attempts to send unsent
write (ssd, *buff, mbytes); disconnect
data sequence
socket option SO_LINGER
block until data sent close (ssd);
• Diagram Source: sjsu.edu Network Programming by Dr. K Hari Babu, CSIS Dept. BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
connect() - connect to server
• The connect() system call connects the active socket
referred to by the file descriptor sockfd to the listening
socket whose address is specified by addr and addrlen.

o sockfd is socket descriptor from socket()

o servaddr is a pointer to a structure with:
 port number and IP address
 must be specified (unlike bind())
o addrlen is length of structure
o client doesn’t need bind()
 OS will pick ephemeral port
o returns socket descriptor if ok, -1 on error

Network Programming by Dr. K Hari Babu, CSIS Dept. BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
connect() - connect to server
• Errors
o If the server’s TCP response to client TCP’s SYN segment is RST,
then there is no process is waiting for incoming connections.
 Hard error
o Three conditions that generate RST are
 when a SYN arrives for a port that has no listening server
 when TCP wants to abort an existing connection
 when TCP receives a segment for a connection that does not exist
o If client’s SYN request elicits ICMP “destination unreachable”
message, kernal saves the message but keeps on sending the SYN
segment.
 Soft error

Network Programming by Dr. K Hari Babu, CSIS Dept. BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
listen() - change socket state to passive

• The listen() system call marks the stream socket referred to

by the file descriptor sockfd as passive.
o The socket will subsequently be used to accept connections from
other (active) sockets.

• sockfd is socket descriptor from socket()

• backlog is maximum number of connections that the server
should queue for this socket
o historically 5
o rarely above 15 on a even moderate Web server!

Network Programming by Dr. K Hari Babu, CSIS Dept. BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
listen()

Network Programming by Dr. K Hari Babu, CSIS Dept. BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
accept() - return next completed connection

• The accept() system call accepts an incoming

connection on the listening stream socket referred to by
the file descriptor sockfd.
o If there are no pending connections when accept() is called, the call
blocks until a connection request arrives.

• sockfd is socket descriptor from socket()

• cliaddr and addrlen return protocol address from client
• returns brand new descriptor, created by OS
o if used with fork(), can create concurrent server

Network Programming by Dr. K Hari Babu, CSIS Dept. BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
close() - close socket fd
• sockfd is socket descriptor from socket()
• closes socket for reading/writing
o returns (doesn’t block)
o attempts to send any unsent data
o socket option SO_LINGER
 block until data sent
 or discard any remaining data
o Returns -1 if error

Network Programming by Dr. K Hari Babu, CSIS Dept. BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
Descriptor Reference Counts
• For every socket a reference count is maintained, as to how
many processes are accessing that socket
• When close() is called on socket descriptor reference count
is decreased by 1
• When close() is called on socket descriptor, TCP 4 packet
termination sequence will be initiated only if the reference
count goes to zero.

Network Programming by Dr. K Hari Babu, CSIS Dept. BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
getsockname() and getpeername() Functions

• getsockname return the local endpoint address associated

with a socket
• getpeername return the foreign protocol address
associated with a socket

Network Programming by Dr. K Hari Babu, CSIS Dept. BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
TCP Echo Client
• TCP client and server using echo protocol

Network Programming by Dr. K Hari Babu, CSIS Dept. BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
TCP Concurrent Server

Network Programming by Dr. K Hari Babu, CSIS Dept. BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
TCP Concurrent Server

Network Programming by Dr. K Hari Babu, CSIS Dept. BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
str_echo function

Network Programming by Dr. K Hari Babu, CSIS Dept. BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
TCP Concurrent Server
• Handling zombies
o while ( (pid = waitpid(-1, &stat, WNOHANG)) > 0) in SIGCHLD
signal handler
• Handling interrupted system calls
o when writing network programs that catch signals, we must be
cognizant of interrupted system calls, and we must handle them
o Slow system call is any system call that can block forever

Network Programming by Dr. K Hari Babu, CSIS Dept. BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
Handling interrupted system calls
for ( ; ; ) {
clilen = sizeof (cliaddr);
if ( (connfd = accept (listenfd, (SA *)
&cliaddr, &clilen)) < 0) {
if (errno == EINTR)
continue; /* back to for () */
else
err_sys ("accept error");
}
• Another option:
o Use sigaction() with SA_RESTART flag.

Network Programming by Dr. K Hari Babu, CSIS Dept. BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
Termination of Server Process
• FIN is sent to client
• Client tcp sends ACK to server
• What if client application doesn’t take not of it, and sends
data to server?

Network Programming by Dr. K Hari Babu, CSIS Dept. BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
SIGPIPE Signal
• When a process writes to a socket that has received an
RST, the SIGPIPE signal is sent to the process.
• The default action of this signal is to terminate the process,
so the process must catch the signal to avoid being
involuntarily terminated.

Network Programming by Dr. K Hari Babu, CSIS Dept. BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
Crashing of Server Host
• Nothing is sent to client
• Client will try to reach the host, but will get errors such as
ETIMEDOUT, EHOSTUNREACH, ENETWORKUNREACH

Network Programming by Dr. K Hari Babu, CSIS Dept. BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
Crashing and Rebooting of Server Host

• When client sends packets, server will respond with RST

Network Programming by Dr. K Hari Babu, CSIS Dept. BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
Shutdown of Server Host
• Init sends SIGTERM to all processes
• Then sends SIG KILL to all processes
• Fin is sent to the client

Network Programming by Dr. K Hari Babu, CSIS Dept. BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
Exercise
• Write a TCP client and server that fulfills the following requirements.
• Server.c:
 server should take port number on command-line and listen on that port.
 server should create a child to handle a new client.
 When a client sends a command such as 'ps', server should execute the
command and send the output to the client.
 it should take care of zombies.
• Client.c:
o client takes ip address and port number of the server on command-line.
o client sets up a connection to the server.
o client takes a command from the user and sends it to the server.
o client waits for the reply and prints the reply on the standard output.

Network Programming by Dr. K Hari Babu, CSIS Dept. BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
Network Programming by Dr. K Hari Babu, CSIS Dept. BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
Network Programming by Dr. K Hari Babu, CSIS Dept. BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
Network Programming by Dr. K Hari Babu, CSIS Dept. BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
Acknowledgements

Network Programming by Dr. K Hari Babu, CSIS Dept. BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
Q&A

Network Programming by Dr. K Hari Babu, CSIS Dept. BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
 BITS Pilani
Pilani Campus

Thank You