Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!uunet!world!ksr!dgg From: dgg@ksr.com (David Grubbs) Newsgroups: comp.unix.amiga Subject: Re: Domain Socket Message-ID: Date: 28 Jan 91 19:22:04 GMT References: <1991Jan27.023818.4112@cs.mcgill.ca> Sender: news@ksr.com Organization: Kendall Square Research, Waltham, MA Lines: 28 In-reply-to: tinyguy@cs.mcgill.ca's message of 26 Jan 91 21:38:18 EST Distribution: In article <1991Jan27.023818.4112@cs.mcgill.ca> tinyguy@cs.mcgill.ca (Yeo-Hoon BAE) asks: This may not apply to the A3000UX, but what exactly is the 'Domain socket'? I think it's only supported by Berkerley Unix. Thanks. All sockets are "Domain sockets". The question is *which* domain. Most programmers use sockets in the "TCP Domain" because they work both on the local machine and across networks. But there are other Domains. If you have the kernel support, there is a socket domain available for each major networking type: XNS, ISO (though it is handled strangely), SNA (even more strangely) and what is called the "Unix Domain socket", to which I believe you refer. A "Unix Domain Socket" is one which expects only to talk to processes on the local host. In the latest Berkeley code, a "pipe()" (invoked by using '|' in the shell) is a unix domain socket pair. Last time I looked, X11 allowed you to use "unix:0.0" as a DISPLAY name and it would create Unix domain sockets instead of the default TCP domain sockets. Unix Domain sockets generally incur much less overhead than other kinds of sockets, generating somewhat less "system time". If you want to understand Amiga Unix, starting reading about Unix. -- David G. Grubbs Kendall Square Research Corp. {harvard,uunet,world}!ksr!dgg dgg@ksr.com