Computer network programming involves writing
computer programs that enable
processes to communicate with each other across a
computer network
A computer network is a set of computers sharing resources located on or provided by network nodes. The computers use common communication protocols over digital interconnections to communicate with each other. These interconnections are ...
.
Connection-oriented and connectionless communications
Very generally, most of communications can be divided into
connection-oriented, and
connectionless. Whether a communication is connection-oriented or connectionless, is defined by the
communication protocol
A communication protocol is a system of rules that allows two or more entities of a communications system to transmit information via any kind of variation of a physical quantity. The protocol defines the rules, syntax, semantics and synchroniza ...
, and not by . Examples of the connection-oriented protocols include and , and examples of connectionless protocols include , "raw IP", and .
Clients and servers
For connection-oriented communications, communication parties usually have different roles. One party is usually waiting for incoming connections; this party is usually referred to as "
server". Another party is the one which initiates connection; this party is usually referred to as "
client
Client(s) or The Client may refer to:
* Client (business)
* Client (computing), hardware or software that accesses a remote service on another computer
* Customer or client, a recipient of goods or services in return for monetary or other valuabl ...
".
For connectionless communications, one party ("server") is usually waiting for an incoming packet, and another party ("client") is usually understood as the one which sends an unsolicited
packet
Packet may refer to:
* A small container or pouch
** Packet (container), a small single use container
** Cigarette packet
** Sugar packet
* Network packet, a formatted unit of data carried by a packet-mode computer network
* Packet radio, a fo ...
to "server".
Popular protocols and APIs
Network programming traditionally covers different layers of
OSI/ISO model (most of application-level programming belongs to L4 and up). The table below contains some examples of popular protocols belonging to different OSI/ISO layers, and popular APIs for them.
See also
*
Software-defined networking
Software-defined networking (SDN) technology is an approach to network management that enables dynamic, programmatically efficient network configuration in order to improve network performance and monitoring, making it more like cloud computing t ...
*
Infrastructure as code
Infrastructure as code (IaC) is the process of managing and provisioning computer data centers through machine-readable definition files, rather than physical hardware configuration or interactive configuration tools.
The IT infrastructure managed ...
*
Site reliability engineering
*
DevOps
DevOps is a set of practices that combines software development (''Dev'') and IT operations (''Ops''). It aims to shorten the systems development life cycle and provide continuous delivery with high software quality. DevOps is complementary to ...
References
* W. Richard Stevens:
UNIX Network Programming
Unix Network Programming is a book written by W. Richard Stevens. It was published in 1990 by Prentice Hall and covers many topics regarding UNIX networking and Computer network programming. The book focuses on the design and development of networ ...
, Volume 1, Second Edition: Networking APIs: Sockets and XTI, Prentice Hall, 1998,
{{reflist
Computer programming
Inter-process communication
Computer networks