For a normal network programmer, the front end to the networking services of the Linux kernel are available through the following C library routines [BECK]:
| socket() | bind() | listen() |
| connect() | accept() | send() |
| sendto() | recv() | recvfrom() |
| getsockopt() | setsockopt() |
As the routine socket() returns a file descriptor, the usual file operations can apply to it, i.e. read(), write(), etc.