BSD Socket referance book

kevinhu

SynopsisBSD sockets take interprocess      communications to a new level. It is no longer necessary for the      communicating processes to run on the same machine. They still      can, but they do not have to.
Not only do these processes not have to run on the same      machine, they do not have to run under the same operating      system. Thanks to BSD sockets, your FreeBSD      software can smoothly cooperate with a program running on a      Macintosh®, another one running on a Sun™ workstation, yet another      one running under Windows® 2000, all connected with an      Ethernet-based local area network.
But your software can equally well cooperate with processes      running in another building, or on another continent, inside a      submarine, or a space shuttle.
It can also cooperate with processes that are not part of a      computer (at least not in the strict sense of the word), but of      such devices as printers, digital cameras, medical equipment.      Just about anything capable of digital communications.

BSD Socket developers-handbook