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Computer network programming involves writing computer programs that enable processes to communicate with each other across a
computer network A computer network is a collection of communicating computers and other devices, such as printers and smart phones. In order to communicate, the computers and devices must be connected by wired media like copper cables, optical fibers, or b ...
.


Connection-oriented and connectionless communications

Very generally, most of communications can be divided into connection-oriented, and connectionless. Whether a communication is connection-oriented or connectionless, is defined by the
communication protocol A communication protocol is a system of rules that allows two or more entities of a communications system to transmit information via any variation of a physical quantity. The protocol defines the rules, syntax, semantics (computer science), sem ...
, and not by . Examples of the connection-oriented protocols include and , and examples of connectionless protocols include , "raw IP", and .


Clients and servers

For connection-oriented communications, communication parties usually have different roles. One party is usually waiting for incoming connections; this party is usually referred to as " server". Another party is the one which initiates connection; this party is usually referred to as " client". For connectionless communications, one party ("server") is usually waiting for an incoming packet, and another party ("client") is usually understood as the one which sends an unsolicited packet to "server".


Popular protocols and APIs

Network programming traditionally covers different layers of OSI/ISO model (most of application-level programming belongs to L4 and up). The table below contains some examples of popular protocols belonging to different OSI/ISO layers, and popular APIs for them.


See also

* Software-defined networking * Infrastructure as code * Site reliability engineering * DevOps


References

* W. Richard Stevens: UNIX Network Programming, Volume 1, Second Edition: Networking APIs: Sockets and XTI, Prentice Hall, 1998, {{reflist Computer networks engineering Computer programming Inter-process communication