Effective TCP/IP Programming Offering tips, practices, and rules of thumb for learning high-performance TCP/IP programming techniques, this book shows you how to avoid TCP/IP's most common trouble spots. It also offers advice on such topics as: exploring IP addressing, subnets, and CIDR; preferring the sockets interface over XTI/TLI; using two TCP connections; and more. Full description
While many C/C++ programmers know at least the basics of TCP/IP, becoming an expert network programmer usually requires a lot of experience and sometimes hard-to-find knowledge. Written to give the intermediate or advanced developer a leg-up in creating robust network applications using TCP/IP and related protocols,
Effective TCP/IP Programming offers a truly valuable review and guide to getting the most out of your networked programs based on this popular standard.
Packaged as a series of 44 tips for better TCP/IP programs, this book actually does much more. Early sections review the basics of the TCP, UDP and IP protocols (along with related standards). A winning feature here is the author's care to distinguish between the well-known BSD (for UNIX) and Winsock (for Windows) versions of sockets. (By using macros and "skeleton" programs, his sample C code will run easily on either implementation.)
Besides nuts-and-bolts programming advice, and plenty of hints for better performance, Snader also discusses how IP works under the hood. Standout sections here include a discussion of the pitfalls of scaling a standalone or LAN TCP/IP application to the Internet, as well as what a "reliable" protocol like TCP really means. He shows you how to handle misbehaving servers and clients, how to use multiple sockets effectively, as well as several useful tips for optimising data streamed across the wire. Though there is no mention of Java here (which offers strong socket support on its own), the author does provide Perl examples that work with sockets to get you started with sockets used within scripting languages.
Since IP is the protocol of choice for the Internet, more and more of us are faced with becoming socket programming experts in a hurry. In all, Effective TCP/IP Programming offers a good mix of basic and advanced tips on today's IP and related protocols. It's a valuable resource for any developer who programs for the Internet and wants both to write better code using sockets. --Richard Dragan, Amazon.com
Topics covered: TCP/IP overview and programming tips, Berkeley Socket Distribution (BSD) vs. Winsock/Windows socket implementation issues, connected and connectionless protocols, network programming frameworks, UDP vs. TCP, reliable protocols, network programming for single workstations, LANs and WANs; event-driven programming, improving write operations, IP packet layout, byte ordering issues, the Nagle and delayed ACK algorithms, using network utilities: inetd, tcpmux, tcpdump, traceroute, ttcp, and netstat; resources and hints for improving network programming skills.
