inet(7F)																  inet(7F)

NAME

       inet - Internet protocol family

SYNOPSIS

DESCRIPTION

       The  internet  protocol	family	is a collection of protocols layered on top of the (IP) network layer, which utilizes the internet address
       format.	The internet family supports the SOCK_STREAM and SOCK_DGRAM socket types.

   Addressing
       Internet addresses are four byte entities.  The include file defines this address as the structure

       Sockets bound to the internet protocol family utilize an addressing structure called Pointers to this structure can be used in system calls
       wherever they ask for a pointer to a

       There are three fields of interest within this structure.  The first is which must be set to AF_INET.  The next is which specifies the port
       number to be used on the desired host.  The third is which is of type and specifies the address of the desired host.

   Protocols
       The internet protocol family is comprised of the IP network protocol, Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP), Transmission Control Proto-
       col  (TCP),  and  User  Datagram Protocol (UDP).  TCP is used to support the socket type while UDP is used to support the socket type.  The
       ICMP message protocol and IP network protocol are not directly accessible.

       The local port address is selected from independent domains for TCP and UDP sockets.  This means that creating a TCP socket and binding	it
       to  local  port	number 10000, for example, does not interfere with creating a UDP socket and also binding it to local port number 10000 at
       the same time.

       Port numbers in the range 1-1023 inclusive are reserved for use by the super-user only.	Attempts to bind to port numbers in this range	by
       non-super-users fail and result in an error returned.

AUTHOR

       was developed by the University of California, Berkeley.

SEE ALSO

       tcp(7P), udp(7P).

																	  inet(7F)