Socket programming boils down to two systems communicating with one another. Generally, network communication comes in two flavors: Transport Control Protocol (TCP) and User Datagram Protocol (UDP).

As ubiquitous as TCP/IP is, network programming interfaces have hardly advanced since the invention of the “Berkeley sockets” low-level networking API.

If you want a book on network programming, there are a few classic choices. [Comer’s] TCP/IP books are a great reference but sometimes is too low level. “Unix Networking Programming&#82… ...

You might check out Unix Network Programming Vol. 1 by Richard Stevens (the same guy who wrote TCP/IP Illustrated). The Linux Programming Interface is supposed to be very good, but I don't have a ...