Handling Network Connections

The whole purpose of a socket's existence is to engage in network connections with other network hosts. Each socket can maintain a single connection using a UDP/IP or TCP/IP transport protocol. Which of the two is used is defined by the sock.protocol property.

Sockets are also capable of working with HTTP. HTTP is not a transport protocol, rather, it is based on TCP. Therefore, when your socket is using TCP, it may be for "plain data transmission" or for HTTP.

In this section:

• TCP Connection Basics
• UDP "Connection" Basics
• Accepting Incoming Connections
• Accepting UDP Broadcasts
• Understanding TCP Reconnects
• Understanding UDP Reconnects and Port Switchover
• Incoming Connections on Multiple Sockets
• Establishing Outgoing Connections
• Sending UDP Broadcasts
• Closing Connections
• Checking Connection Status
• More On the Socket's Asynchronous Nature