what is winsock

What is winsock?

Winsock is a specification for network programming under Windows. This specification is a widely used, open, and network programming interface that supports multiple protocols under Windows.

From version 1.0 in 1991 to version 2.0.8 in 1995, after continuous improvement and with the full support of Intel, Microsoft, Sun, SGI, Informix, Novell and other companies, it has become the standard for Windows network programming. de facto standard.

Specification

A set of network programming interfaces under Microsoft Windows are defined using the popular Socket interface in BSD UNIX at U.C. Berkeley University as an example.

It not only includes the familiar Berkeley Socket style library functions; it also includes a set of extended library functions for Windows so that programmers can make full use of the Windows message-driven mechanism for programming. The original intention of the Windows Sockets specification is to provide application developers with a simple API and allow various network software vendors to comply with it.

In addition, based on a specific version of Windows, Windows Sockets also defines a binary interface (ABI) to ensure that applications using the Windows Sockets API can run on any network software vendor that complies with Windows Work on the implementation of the Sockets protocol.

So this specification defines a set of library function calls and related semantics that application developers can use and network software vendors can implement. Network software that complies with this set of Windows Sockets specifications is called Windows Sockets compatible, and providers of Windows Sockets compatible implementations are called Windows Sockets providers. A network software vendor must implement 100% of the Windows Sockets specification to be Windows Sockets compatible.

Any application that is compatible with Windows Sockets and works together is considered to have a Windows Sockets interface.

We call this application a Windows Sockets application. The Windows Sockets specification defines and records how to use the API to connect to the Internet Protocol Suite (IPS, usually we refer to TCP/IP). In particular, it is important to point out that all Windows Sockets implementations support stream sockets and datagram sockets. Application Programs call the API of Windows Sockets to communicate with each other.

Windows Sockets utilizes the underlying network communication protocol functions and operating system calls to implement actual communication work.

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