C Socket Programming Tutorial SHARE Session 5958

Writing Client/Server Programs in C

Using Sockets (A Tutorial)
Part I

Session 5958

Greg Granger
grgran@sas.com

SAS/C & C++ Support

SAS Institute
Cary, NC
SAS Institute Inc. Slide 1
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 C Socket Programming Tutorial SHARE Session 5958

Part I: Socket Programming Overview

U Sockets (to me)
U Networking (or what’s natural about natural logs)
U TCP/IP (and what it means to your life)
U More Sockets (we didn’t get enough the first time)

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 C Socket Programming Tutorial SHARE Session 5958

What is “Sockets”
U An Application Programming Interface (API) used
for InterProcess Communications (IPC). [A well
defined method of connecting two processes,
locally or across a network]
U Protocol and Language Independent
U Often referred to as Berkeley Sockets or BSD
Sockets

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 C Socket Programming Tutorial SHARE Session 5958

Connections and Associations

U In Socket terms a connections between two
processes in called an association.
U An association can be abstractly defined as a 5-
tuple which specifies the two processes and a
method of communication. For example:
• {protocol, local-addr, local-process, foreign-addr, foreign-process}

U A half-association is a single “side” of an

association (a 3-tuple)
• {protocol, addr, process}

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 C Socket Programming Tutorial SHARE Session 5958

Networking Terms
U packet - the smallest unit that can be transferred
“through” the network by itself
U protocol - a set of rules and conventions between
the communicating participants
U A collection of protocol layers is referred to as a
“protocol suite”, “protocol family” or “protocol
stack”. TCP/IP is one such protocol suite.

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 C Socket Programming Tutorial SHARE Session 5958

Introduction to TCP/IP
U What (the heck) is TCP/IP?
U Internet Protocol (IP)
U User Datagram Protocol (UDP)
U Transmission Control Protocol (TCP)
U TCP/IP Applications
U Name Resolution Processing
U TCP/IP Network Diagram

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 C Socket Programming Tutorial SHARE Session 5958

What is TCP/IP?
U Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol
U A network protocol suite for interprocess
communication
U The protocol of the Internet
U Open, nonproprietary
U Integrated into UNIX operating systems
U Many popular networking applications
• telnet • NFS (network file system)
• X11 GUI • SMTP (mail)
• www • ftp (file transfer protocol)

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 C Socket Programming Tutorial SHARE Session 5958

TCP/IP Architectural Model

REXEC / SMTP / TELNET / FTP
Process (message)
/ DNS / RPC / Local Apps.

Transport (message) TCP UDP

Network (packets) ICMP IP (R)ARP

Data Link (frames) Ethernet Token-Ring FDDI X.25

SNA Hyperchannel Proprietary

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 C Socket Programming Tutorial SHARE Session 5958

Internet Protocol (IP)

U Establishes a “virtual” network between hosts,
independent of the underlying network topology
U Provides “routing” throughout the network, using
IP addressing. For example: 149.173.70.9
U Features
• Best-effort packet delivery
TCP UDP
• Connectionless (stateless)
• Unreliable
IP
Physical Network

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 C Socket Programming Tutorial SHARE Session 5958

User Datagram Protocol (UDP)

U Application Interface to IP - Packet Oriented
U Establishes a “port”, which allows IP to distinguish
among processes running on the same host
U Features resemble IP semantics
• Connectionless
• Unreliable
TCP UDP
• Checksums (optional)
IP

Physical Network

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 C Socket Programming Tutorial SHARE Session 5958

Transmission Control Protocol (TCP)

U Connection-oriented
U Stream Data Transfer TCP UDP
U Reliable IP
U Flow-Control
Physical Network
U Full-Duplex
U Suited for critical data transfer applications

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 C Socket Programming Tutorial SHARE Session 5958

The Importance of Ports

U Both the TCP and UDP protocols use 16 bit
identifiers called ports to uniquely identify the
processes involved in a socket.
U In UNIX the first 1024 ports for both protocols are
called “well known ports” and are defined in the file
/etc/services. Programs that bind to these ports
require “root” access.
U These numbers are managed by the Internet
Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA). A complete
list of these assignments and more information
about IANA can be found in RFC 1700
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 C Socket Programming Tutorial SHARE Session 5958

How stuff gets around (routing)

U TCP/IP packets are routed based on their
destination IP address (ex: 10.24.2.123)
U Packets are passed from one network segment to
another by machines called “routers” until the
packet arrives at the network segment attached to
the host with the destination IP address.
U Routers that act as gates to larger networks are
called gateways.

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 C Socket Programming Tutorial SHARE Session 5958

Name Resolution Processing

U Associates an IP address to a “name” (hostname)
U Structured method of identifying hosts within an internet
U The Domain Name System (DNS) implements a hierarchical
naming scheme which maps names like “mvs.sas.com” to
an IP address
U DNS is implemented by a set of cooperating servers
U Machines that process DNS requests are called nameservers
U A set of library routines called “the resolver” provide the
logic to query nameservers

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 C Socket Programming Tutorial SHARE Session 5958

TCP/UDP/IP Diagram
Dev1.sas.com
(149.179.3.3)
64K
TCP Ports
REXEC client
REXEC
Server
Dev2.sas.com
port 512
1023 (149.179.83.6)
Well-known Ports
0 IP Routing
0
Well-known Ports
1023 REXEC client

Server1.net.sas.com
(149.193.2.194)

UDP Ports 64K internet

NameServer
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 C Socket Programming Tutorial SHARE Session 5958

Back to Sockets
U Socket Definition and Components
U Socket Library Functions
U Primary Socket Header Files
U Sample Client/Server Dialog
U Ancillary Socket Topics
U Beyond Sockets

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 C Socket Programming Tutorial SHARE Session 5958

Definition and Components

U Socket - endpoint of communication
U Sockets - An application programming interface
(API) for interprocess communication (IPC)
U Attributes:
• Protocol Independent
• Language Independent
• Sockets implies (not requires) TCP/IP and C
U Socket and Connection Association
• A local host can be identified by it’s protocol, IP address and port.
• A connection adds the IP address & port of the remote host.

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 C Socket Programming Tutorial SHARE Session 5958

Socket Library Function

U System calls
• startup / close
• data transfer
• options control
• other
U Network configuration lookup
• host address
• ports for services
• other
U Utility functions
• data conversion
• address manipulation
• error handling
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 C Socket Programming Tutorial SHARE Session 5958

Primary Socket Calls

U socket() - create a new socket and return its descriptor
U bind() - associate a socket with a port and address
U listen() - establish queue for connection requests
U accept() - accept a connection request
U connect() - initiate a connection to a remote host
U recv() - receive data from a socket descriptor
U send() - send data to a socket descriptor
U close() - “one-way” close of a socket descriptor

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 C Socket Programming Tutorial SHARE Session 5958

Network Database Administration functions

U gethostbyname - given a hostname, returns a structure
which specifies its DNS name(s) and IP address(es)
U getservbyname - given service name and protocol, returns a
structure which specifies its name(s) and its port address
U gethostname - returns hostname of local host
U getservbyname, getservbyport, getservent
U getprotobyname, getprotobynumber, getprotobyent
U getnetbyname, getnetbyaddr, getnetent

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 C Socket Programming Tutorial SHARE Session 5958

Socket Utility Functions

U ntohs/ntohl - convert short/long from network byte order
(big endian) to host byte order
U htons/htonl - convert short/long from host byte order to
network byte order
U inet_ntoa/inet_addr - convert 32-bit IP address (network
byte order to/from a dotted decimal string)
U perror() - print error message (based on “errno”) to stderr
U herror() - print error message for gethostbyname() to stderr
(used with DNS)

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 C Socket Programming Tutorial SHARE Session 5958

Primary Header Files

U Include file sequence may affect processing (order is
important!)
• <sys/types.h> - prerequisite typedefs
• <errno.h> - names for “errno” values (error numbers)
• <sys/socket.h> - struct sockaddr; system prototypes and constants
• <netdb.h.h> - network info lookup prototypes and structures
• <netinet/in.h> - struct sockaddr_in; byte ordering macros
• <arpa/inet.h> - utility function prototypes

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 C Socket Programming Tutorial SHARE Session 5958

Sample TCP Client / Server Session

Iterative Server

socket()
Remote Client

bind() socket()

listen() gethostbyname()

accept() connect()

recv()/send() recv()/send()

close() close()

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 C Socket Programming Tutorial SHARE Session 5958

Ancillary Socket Topics

U UDP versus TCP
U Controlling/managing socket characteristics
• get/setsockopt() - keepalive, reuse, nodelay
• fcntl() - async signals, blocking
• ioctl() - file, socket, routing, interface options
U Blocking versus Non-blocking socket
U Signal based socket programming (SIGIO)
U Implementation specific functions

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 C Socket Programming Tutorial SHARE Session 5958

Design Considerations
U Data representation and conversion
U Server design alternatives
U Security Issues
U Portability Considerations

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 C Socket Programming Tutorial SHARE Session 5958

Data Representation
U Transport Protocols detail data exchange/movement;
applications must interpret the data!
U Byte order affects data - not just addresses
U Text is often sent in ASCII, but ASCII versus EBCDIC is
decided by the application-level protocol
U Structure alignment and floating point pose problems
U External Data Representation (XDR) can be used (even
without RPC)

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 C Socket Programming Tutorial SHARE Session 5958

Server Design Alternatives

U Single Threaded
• more complex code (must track multiple concurrent requests)
• generally lower system overhead
• crash of thread disables service
U Multi-Tasking
• less complex code (written only for handling only one connection)
• higher system overhead (each task requires it’s own process space)
• highly crash resistant (one or more tasks can fail without losing
service)
U [Multi-]Threaded
• shares less complex code of Multi-Tasking model
• system overhead between Single-Threaded and Multi-Tasking model
• crash resistant (but one badly behaved thread ‘can’ crash service)

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 C Socket Programming Tutorial SHARE Session 5958

Security Considerations
U Socket semantics do NOT address security problems, such
as:
• IP and adapter addresses
• Userid and passwords
• data encryption
• traces
U UNIX systems require “root” privilege when a program binds
a “reserved” (<1024) port
U getpeername() returns the peer’s port and IP-address:
determine “privileged” peers and “trusted” hosts
U The Kerberos protocol provides password and data
encryption, along with service authentication

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 C Socket Programming Tutorial SHARE Session 5958

Portability Considerations
U Limit applications to “standard” socket routines, BSD 4.x
U Implement a portable transport module
U Mainframe Environment - Distribute existing applications
• API Programmer’s Reference - Details
• SAS/C, C/370, Interlink, Open Connect, NSC
U OS/2 - REXX Sockets, Programmer’s Toolkit
U MS Windows Sockets 1.1 - 2 WINSOCK.DLL
(http://www.stardust.com ftp.stardust.com:/pub/winsock)

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 C Socket Programming Tutorial SHARE Session 5958

Summary
U Basic networking and features of TCP/IP protocols
U Socket library organization
U Socket library coding techniques
U Awareness of more advanced topics

What’s Next
U Session 5959 - Part II - Client/Server Application

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 C Socket Programming Tutorial SHARE Session 5958

Bibliography
U Internetworking with TCP/IP: Volumes I, II & III, Douglas
Comer, Prentice Hall, 1991 (ISBN Vol I: 0134685059, Vol
III: 0138487146)
U The Whole Internet User’s Guide & Catalog by Ed Kroll;
O’Reilly & Associates
U UNIX Network Programming by W. Richard Stevens;
Prentice Hall, 1990 (ISBN 0139498761)
U Socket API Programmer’s Reference
U UNIX “man” pages
U TCP/IP Illustrated: Volumes 1 & 2, W. Richard Stevens (v2
with Gary R. Wright); Addison-Wesley Publishing Company,
1994

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