Application Interfaces

Application Interfaces

User-level processes access the network in one of three ways:

using the BSD socket interface (top left of Figure 16-1)
using the SVR4 TLI interface through compatibility libraries that convert TLI operations into socket operations (top center of Figure 16-1)
using a STREAMS interface to a STREAMS-based protocol stack (top right of Figure 16-1)

These three interfaces are documented in the IRIX Network Programming Guide

The native socket-based TCP/IP protocol code, the socket layer, and a number of ifnet-based device drivers are bundled in the basic IRIX system. Socket-based applications such as rlogin, rcp, NFS client and server, and the socket-based RPC library operate directly over this native networking framework.

Compatibility support is included for applications written to the STREAMS Transport Layer Interface (TLI). tpisocket is a kernel library module used by protocol-specific STREAMS pseudo-drivers, such as tpitcp, tpiudp, and so on, providing a TPI interface above the native kernel sockets-based network protocol stack.

A STREAMS pseudo-driver that supports the Data Link Provider Interface (DLPI) for STREAMS-based kernel protocol stacks is delivered in the optional dlpi package.