TCP(4) MachTen Programmer’s Manual TCP(4)

NAME
tcp - Internet Transmission Control Protocol

SYNOPSIS
#include <sys/socket.h>
#include <netinet/in.h>

int
socket(AF_INET, SOCK_STREAM, 0)

DESCRIPTION
The TCP protocol provides reliable, flow-controlled, two-way transmission
of data. It is a byte-stream protocol used to support the SOCK_STREAM
abstraction. TCP uses the standard Internet address format and, in addi-
tion, provides a per-host collection of ‘‘port addresses’’. Thus, each
address is composed of an Internet address specifying the host and net-
work, with a specific TCP port on the host identifying the peer entity.

Sockets utilizing the tcp protocol are either ‘‘active’’ or ‘‘passive’’.
Active sockets initiate connections to passive sockets. By default TCP
sockets are created active; to create a passive socket the listen(2) sys-
tem call must be used after binding the socket with the bind(2) system
call. Only passive sockets may use the accept(2) call to accept incoming
connections. Only active sockets may use the connect(2) call to initiate
connections.

Passive sockets may ‘‘underspecify’’ their location to match incoming
connection requests from multiple networks. This technique, termed
‘‘wildcard addressing’’, allows a single server to provide service to
clients on multiple networks. To create a socket which listens on all
networks, the Internet address INADDR_ANY must be bound. The TCP port
may still be specified at this time; if the port is not specified the
system will assign one. Once a connection has been established the sock-
et’s address is fixed by the peer entity’s location. The address as-
signed the socket is the address associated with the network interface
through which packets are being transmitted and received. Normally this
address corresponds to the peer entity’s network.

TCP supports one socket option which is set with setsockopt(2) and tested
with getsockopt(2). Under most circumstances, TCP sends data when it is
presented; when outstanding data has not yet been acknowledged, it gath-
ers small amounts of output to be sent in a single packet once an ac-
knowledgement is received. For a small number of clients, such as window
systems that send a stream of mouse events which receive no replies, this
packetization may cause significant delays. Therefore, TCP provides a
boolean option, TCP_NODELAY (from <netinet/tcp.h>, to defeat this algo-
rithm. The option level for the setsockopt call is the protocol number
for TCP, available from getprotobyname(3).

Options at the IP transport level may be used with TCP; see ip(4). In-
coming connection requests that are source-routed are noted, and the re-
verse source route is used in responding.

DIAGNOSTICS
A socket operation may fail with one of the following errors returned:

[EISCONN] when trying to establish a connection on a socket which
already has one;

[ENOBUFS] when the system runs out of memory for an internal data

structure;

[ETIMEDOUT] when a connection was dropped due to excessive retrans-
missions;

[ECONNRESET] when the remote peer forces the connection to be closed;

[ECONNREFUSED] when the remote peer actively refuses connection estab-
lishment (usually because no process is listening to the
port);

[EADDRINUSE] when an attempt is made to create a socket with a port
which has already been allocated;

[EADDRNOTAVAIL] when an attempt is made to create a socket with a net-
work address for which no network interface exists.

SEE ALSO
getsockopt(2), socket(2), intro(4), inet(4), ip(4)

HISTORY
The tcp protocol stack appeared in 4.2BSD.

4.2 Berkeley Distribution June 5, 1993 2