Chapter 14. Network Programming in Python with the Pi

A network socket is an endpoint of a connection across computer networks. Nowadays, almost all communication between computers and distinct networks is based on the Internet Protocol, which uses sockets as a basis of communication. A socket is an abstract reference that a local program can pass to the network API to make use of a connection. Sockets are internally often represented in network programming APIs simply as integers, which identify which connection to use. In brief, we will be covering the following topics in this chapter:

• The basics of sockets

• The difference between TCP and UDP sockets

• UDP sockets

• TCP sockets

• The Telnet program

• A chat application