TCP/IP Sockets in C: Practical Guide for Programmers (Morgan Kaufmann Practical Guides)

This book includes enough easy to read explanations of actual working code that you can within a few hours have a client/server socket connection up and working. Both the text and the code are well written and easy to follow. Advanced information about non-blocking I/O allowed me to quickly implement background socket reads without tying up a foreground process. The annoying occurrences of "address already in use" errors is explained clearly, and how to get around them by the use of socket options. I had literally zero problems compiling and executing the examples with the gcc compiler and Ubuntu Linux.As the title says, it's a book for C programmers about sockets, not for other languages. There is a chapter on C++ use, which I have not needed yet.

Had the first edition for a number of years and it served me well. Recently had to modify a module I had written years ago to work with IP V6. The updates to the book provided the precise information needed. Also the sample code provided has been improved to better conform to current best practices. The book does assume that the reader has a basic level of 'C' programming skills and access to a C compiler. The code as presented will compile and run with FreeBSD, Linux and OS-X . Had no need to try Windows.

It's OK and I find it very useful because it contains many examples and the most important things are explained well. I think that one should know the basic concepts of networks and network programming in order to understand this book. Also a minimum level of programming in C is required, but don't worry. If you don't understand something in the source code you can immediately look it up in a classical C reference book.This is the only book I found on this topic: Network programming in C.

The authors leave it to the reader to know which header file is required for each function and data type, so it makes a good exercise to go through and write it into the code listings. Other than that, they'll walk you through an echo server which just acts as a stub for a more sophisticated algorithm, which is also a little bit of a disappointment, because there were really no more sophisticated algorithms when I skimmed through it, just different packaging for the same empty stub. It could have been more organized as well. They heap four chapters of code on you, basically assuming that you know C, only to give you a Chapter 5 review of the concept of "endedness" and data types.However, you can start to appreciate the echo server's elegant simplicity when they start covering more advanced topics like servers that implement sockets through multitasking and multliplexing towards end of the text. There's a fair amount of material about UDP in the text as well and while the headline is TCP/IP Sockets, it doesn't feel out of place at all.

Good book for beginners

I have not done much in the way of network programming before. Although I've taken classes on networks, and played with aspects of networks to create my own home network, I'm not very familiar with all of the basic terms and concepts.This guide was great for showing me the ropes. They cover a lot of ground quickly, so you may need to supplement the readings with some internet searching, but that's mostly for background information and getting a deeper understanding of the concept being covered.It will take you from knowing nothing to writing clients and servers for TCP or UDP.This one is great for C, and there is an equivalent for C# that uses .Net Framework wrappers. It is very up to date and still relevant. I highly recommend this.

Excellent Book for the beginning programmer. Especially if you are an embedded programmer.Someone above mentioned that the source code was not available. It isn't at the location in the book but it is here:http://cs.ecs.baylor.edu/~donahoo/practical/CSockets2/textcode.html

I am extremely disappointed with the fact that the Elsevier has removed online access for this book. The last page of the book states: "Thank you for your purchase. Please note that your purchase of this Elsevier eBook also includes access to an online version. Please click (or go to ebooks.elsevier.com) to request an activation code and registration instructions in order to gain acces to the web version." An attempt to access the online information from Elsevier resulted in their site indicating that the ISBN was not valid. A call to their support line revealed that even though this book is still in print and Elsevier is still selling it, they no longer offer the online access, which also means no access to the source code needed to make the examples work. Because most of the code doesn't even exist in the book (i.e. Practical.h, the various .c libraries) that are referenced in the code examples, none of this works. A total waste of time and horrible support by both the publisher and the author who failed to make sure that the code needed to make the examples work was printed in the book in the first place.