TCP(7P) TCP(7P)
NAME
tcp - Internet Transmission Control Protocol
SYNOPSIS
#include <sys/socket.h>
#include <netinet/in.h>
s = socket(AFINET, SOCKSTREAM, 0);
DESCRIPTION
The TCP protocol provides reliable, flow-controlled, two-way
transmission of data. It is a byte-stream protocol used to
support the SOCK_STREAM abstraction. TCP uses the standard
Internet address format and, in addition, provides a per-
host collection of "port addresses". Thus, each address is
composed of an Internet address specifying the host and
network, with a specific TCP port on the host identifying
the peer entity.
Sockets utilizing the tcp protocol are either "active" or
"passive". Active sockets initiate connections to passive
sockets. By default TCP sockets are created active; to
create a passive socket the listen(2) system call must be
used after binding the socket with the bind(2) system call.
Only passive sockets may use the accept(2) call to accept
incoming connections. Only active sockets may use the
connect(2) call to initiate connections.
Passive sockets may "underspecify" their location to match
incoming connection requests from multiple networks. This
technique, termed "wildcard addressing", allows a single
server to provide service to clients on multiple networks.
To create a socket which listens on all networks, the
Internet address INADDR_ANY must be bound. The TCP port may
still be specified at this time; if the port is not
specified the system will assign one. Once a connection has
been established the socket's address is fixed by the peer
entity's location. The address assigned the socket is the
address associated with the network interface through which
packets are being transmitted and received. Normally this
address corresponds to the peer entity's network.
TCP supports one socket option which is tested with
getsockopt(2). Under most circumstances, TCP sends data
when it is presented; when outstanding data has not yet been
acknowledged, it gathers small amounts of output to be sent
in a single packet once an acknowledgement is received. For
a small number of clients, such as window systems that send
a stream of mouse events which receive no replies, this
packetization may cause significant delays. Therefore, TCP
provides a boolean option, TCP_NODELAY (from
<netinet/tcp.h>, to defeat this algorithm.
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TCP(7P) TCP(7P)
Options at the IP transport level may be used with TCP; see
ip(7P). Incoming connection requests that are source-routed
are noted, and the reverse source route is used in
responding.
DIAGNOSTICS
A socket operation may fail with one of the following errors
returned:
[EISCONN] when trying to establish a connection on
a socket which already has one;
[ENOBUFS] when the system runs out of memory for
an internal data structure;
[ETIMEDOUT] when a connection was dropped due to
excessive retransmissions;
[ECONNRESET] when the remote peer forces the
connection to be closed;
[ECONNREFUSED] when the remote peer actively refuses
connection establishment (usually
because no process is listening to the
port);
[EADDRINUSE] when an attempt is made to create a
socket with a port which has already
been allocated;
[EADDRNOTAVAIL] when an attempt is made to create a
socket with a network address for which
no network interface exists.
SEE ALSO
getsockopt(2), socket(2), inet(7P), ip(7P)
ORIGIN
4.3 BSD
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