Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!udel!haven!uvaarpa!murdoch!paisley!rja7m From: rja7m@paisley.cs.Virginia.EDU (Ran Atkinson) Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip Subject: Re: Are sockets the wave of the future? Message-ID: <1990Aug24.220021.10122@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU> Date: 24 Aug 90 22:00:21 GMT References: <9008242107.AA19843@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU> Sender: news@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU Reply-To: Ran Atkinson Followup-To: comp.protocols.tcp-ip Distribution: comp Organization: University of Virginia Computer Science Department Lines: 15 The network interfaces specified by the System V Interface Definition and by the X/Open consortium are based on the STREAMS with TLI (Transport Level Interface) that were originally developed at AT&T. Since the System V socket-library is built on top of STREAMS/TLI, an application written to use sockets will probably be slower on a System V system that the same application written using STREAMS/TLI natively. In general I think that the STREAMS/TLI approach is better because details of the transport protocol used are appropriately hidden unlike BSD sockets. Certainly a lot of good software is out there using sockets and I don't think that the socket library will disappear anytime soon, but for new software I really think that STREAMS/TLI are a better approach -- especially if developing for a System V platform.