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Date:	Sun, 25 Jul 2004 09:00:14 PDT7
From:	Peter Skye <pskye@peterskye.com >
Reply-To:	scoug-help@scoug.com
To:	scoug-help@scoug.com
Subject:	SCOUG-Help: Help with netstat -s

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Harry Motin wrote:
>
> I don't fully appreciate what a socket means, but I'll look it up.

TCP keeps a spreadsheet of all your connections with columns for
different things such as the IP of the foreign machine. Each row of the
spreadsheet is a single connection, and these rows are called
"sockets". That's all that a socket is. It's a row in a spreadsheet.

When your program tells TCP that it wants a connection to the Internet,
TCP looks at its spreadsheet, finds an unused row, and returns that row
number to your program with a "your new connection will keep all its
information in row (socket) number 1357" message. From that point on,
your program can do anything it wants with the connection but you
include the row (socket) number in each call to TCP so that TCP knows
which row in its spreadsheet has all the information.

When you first get a row (socket) in the TCP spreadsheet the entries are
all blank (zero). After you open the socket, maybe change a few
parameters (the info is kept in various spreadsheet columns), connect to
some other machine, send some bytes, then those entries aren't blank
(zero) any more. "netstat -s" reports the info in the TCP spreadsheet;
if an entry is blank (zero) then that's what netstat -s displays.

- Peter

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