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From: dzoey@TERMINUS.UMD.EDU
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip.ibmpc
Subject: Re: Sunday Afternoon Observations
Message-ID: <8711082334.aa00326@Louie.UDEL.EDU>
Date: Sun, 8-Nov-87 23:33:03 EST
Article-I.D.: Louie.8711082334.aa00326
Posted: Sun Nov  8 23:33:03 1987
Date-Received: Wed, 11-Nov-87 04:08:21 EST
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The ARPA Internet
Lines: 30

Billy, 

I agree with you about the socket interface not being the catchall networking.
However, it does have the advantage that it is a pseudo-standard and that 
applications written to BSD sockets should port fairly quickly to other 
socket interfaces.  Plus, there's already a large software base of 
applications written to the socket interface.  Like most standards, 
it's not the best, but it is (or should be) consistant. I would like 
to see some comment from the net on which socket options the PC socket 
standard should support.  This seems to be an area of some 
inconsistancy among socket interfaces.

The largest problem I've had with sockets has been in dealing with
protocol specific information.  For instance, I find the socket interface 
awfully clunky when dealing with IP options and urgent TCP data 
could be handled a little more gracefully.  But, for no nonsense data
transfers, send and recv work fine.

I am curious as to what other "standard" networking interfaces look like.
How does Sys5 handle the network with their streams concept?  What other
networking interfaces are around?  

What do people want in a network interface?

                        Curiously
                        Joe Herman
                        Univ. of Md. PC/IP

P.S.  I have written applications from scratch (copying from BSD is a no-no) 
      using select().  It's something you get used to fairly quickly.