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From: rodk@germania.Sun.COM (Rod King (Sun HQ Consulting))
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: Re: Are sockets the wave of the future?
Message-ID: <2151@jethro.Corp.Sun.COM>
Date: 24 Aug 90 20:35:20 GMT
References: <2117@rossignol.Princeton.EDU>
Sender: news@jethro.Corp.Sun.COM
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Mt. View, Ca.
Lines: 29

In article <2117@rossignol.Princeton.EDU> tr@samadams.princeton.edu (Tom Reingold) writes:
>At my job, we are about to write some applications for running over
>TCP/IP on Unix hosts.  We would like to think ahead with portability in
>mind.  One day, our code may run on a non-unix host.  And if we write
>it in sockets, we may run against a version that is built upon and
>supports only STREAMS.  Or will we?

With respect to Unix systems, System V r4 (SVr4) presents the
Transport Level Interface (TLI). This is the transport layer interface that
will obsolete sockets; there will be STREAMS modules existing underneath
the interface. TLI is modeled after the ISO Transport Service Definition
(ISO 8072), so presumably, if your non-unix host has a similiar facility,
porting shouldn't be that bad.

>3. Are all TCP/IP suites done with sockets nowadays?
SVr4 (or at least Sun's version) will be using STREAMS.

I'm not sure of the commercial availability of TLI in a Unix system
(SunOS 4.1, the current version, does NOT support it).

By the way, if your application can use some sort of RPC facility, then
you can be shielded from all of this.

If you want some TLI documentation, refer to "Network Programming Guide",
from Sun Microsystems  (part 800-3850-10).

Good luck!

Rod