Socket
<networking> The
Berkeley Unix mechansim for creating a virtual connection between processes.
Sockets interface
Unix's
standard I/O with its
network communication facilities.
They can be of two types, stream (bi-directional) or
datagram (fixed length destination-addressed messages). The socket library function socket() creates a communications end-point or socket and returns a
file descriptor with which to access that socket.
The socket has associated with it a socket address, consisting of a
port number and the local host's network address.
Unix manual page: socket(2).
