这是我所在组织的一位软件工程师提出的问题。我感兴趣的是最广义的定义。


当前回答

一个连接套接字(fd)用于本地地址+本地端口+对端地址+对端端口。通过套接字抽象处理recv/发送数据。 一个监听套接字(fd)用于本地地址+本地监听端口。进程可以通过套接字接受新的连接。

其他回答

A socket represents a single connection between two network applications. These two applications nominally run on different computers, but sockets can also be used for interprocess communication on a single computer. Applications can create multiple sockets for communicating with each other. Sockets are bidirectional, meaning that either side of the connection is capable of both sending and receiving data. Therefore a socket can be created theoretically at any level of the OSI model from 2 upwards. Programmers often use sockets in network programming, albeit indirectly. Programming libraries like Winsock hide many of the low-level details of socket programming. Sockets have been in widespread use since the early 1980s.

端口表示网络通信的端点或“通道”。端口号允许同一计算机上的不同应用程序在不相互干扰的情况下利用网络资源。端口号最常出现在网络编程中,尤其是套接字编程中。但是,有时端口号对普通用户是可见的。例如,一个人在因特网上访问的一些网站使用如下URL:

http://www.mairie-metz.fr:8080/在本例中,数字8080指Web浏览器连接到Web服务器所使用的端口号。通常,Web站点使用端口号80,该端口号不需要包含在URL中(尽管可以包含)。

在IP组网中,端口号理论上可以在0到65535之间。但是,大多数流行的网络应用程序使用范围较低的端口号(例如HTTP的80)。

注意:术语端口还指网络技术的其他几个方面。端口可以指外部设备的物理连接点,如串口、并口和USB端口。术语端口也指某些以太网连接点,例如集线器、交换机或路由器上的连接点。

ref http://compnetworking.about.com/od/basicnetworkingconcepts/l/bldef_port.htm

ref http://compnetworking.about.com/od/itinformationtechnology/l/bldef_socket.htm

A socket is a communication endpoint. A socket is not directly related to the TCP/IP protocol family, it can be used with any protocol your system supports. The C socket API expects you to first get a blank socket object from the system that you can then either bind to a local socket address (to directly retrieve incoming traffic for connection-less protocols or to accept incoming connection requests for connection-oriented protocols) or that you can connect to a remote socket address (for either kind of protocol). You can even do both if you want to control both, the local socket address a socket is bound to and the remote socket address a socket is connected to. For connection-less protocols connecting a socket is even optional but if you don't do that, you'll have to also pass the destination address with every packet you want to send over the socket as how else would the socket know where to send this data to? Advantage is that you can use a single socket to send packets to different socket addresses. Once you have your socket configured and maybe even connected, consider it to be a bi-directional communication pipe. You can use it to pass data to some destination and some destination can use it to pass data back to you. What you write to a socket is send out and what has been received is available for reading.

Ports on the other hand are something that only certain protocols of the TCP/IP protocol stack have. TCP and UDP packets have ports. A port is just a simple number. The combination of source port and destination port identify a communication channel between two hosts. E.g. you may have a server that shall be both, a simple HTTP server and a simple FTP server. If now a packet arrives for the address of that server, how would it know if that is a packet for the HTTP or the FTP server? Well, it will know so as the HTTP server will run on port 80 and the FTP server on port 21, so if the packet arrives with a destination port 80, it is for the HTTP server and not for the FTP server. Also the packet has a source port since without such a source port, a server could only have one connection to one IP address at a time. The source port makes it possible for a server to distinguish otherwise identical connections: they all have the same destination port, e.g. port 80, the same destination IP (the IP of the server), and the same source IP, as they all come from the same client, but as they have different source ports, the server can distinguish them from each other. And when the server sends back replies, it will do so to the port the request came from, that way the client can also distinguish different replies it receives from the same server.

套接字是一种特殊类型的文件句柄,进程使用它从操作系统请求网络服务。 套接字地址是三元组: {protocol, local-address, local-process},其中本地进程由端口号标识。

在TCP/IP套件中,例如:

{tcp, 193.44.234.3, 12345}

会话是两个进程之间的通信链接,从而描述了两者之间的关联。 关联是一个5元组,它完全指定了组成连接的两个进程: {protocol, local-address, local-process, foreign-address, foreign-process}

在TCP/IP套件中,例如:

{tcp, 193.44.234.3, 1500, 193.44.234.5, 21}

可能是一个有效的关联。

半关联是: {protocol, local-address, local-process}

or

{protocol, foreign-address, foreign-process}

它们指定连接的每一半。

半关联也称为套接字或传输地址。也就是说,套接字是可以在网络中命名和寻址的通信端点。 套接字接口是通信协议的几个应用程序编程接口(api)之一。它被设计为一个通用的通信编程接口,最初由4.2BSD UNIX系统引入。虽然还没有标准化,但已经成为事实上的行业标准。

端口是网络协议用来访问连接的主机的实体。端口可以是特定于应用程序的,也可以是与特定通信媒介相关的。不同的协议使用不同的端口访问主机,如HTTP使用80端口或FTP使用23端口。您可以在应用程序中分配用户定义的端口号,但这些端口号应该大于1023。

端口打开到所需主机的连接,而套接字是网络间或进程间通信的端点。 套接字是由系统通过api(应用程序编程接口)分配的。

更微妙的区别是,当系统重新启动时,端口将出现,而套接字将被销毁。

一般来说,你会得到很多理论,但区分这两个概念的最简单方法之一是:

为了获得服务,你需要一个服务号码。这个服务号码称为端口。就这么简单。

例如,HTTP as a service运行在端口80上。

现在,许多人都可以请求该服务,并建立了来自客户机-服务器的连接。会有很多联系。每个连接代表一个客户端。为了维护每个连接,服务器为每个连接创建一个套接字来维护其客户端。