Socket Communication Domains

Sockets that share common communication properties, such as naming conventions and protocol address formats, are grouped into communication domains. A communication domain is sometimes referred to as name or address space.

The communication domain includes the following:
  • Rules for manipulating and interpreting names
  • Collection of related address formats that comprise an address family
  • Set of protocols, called the protocol family

Communication domains also consist of two categories, socket types and descriptors. Socket types include stream, datagram, sequenced packet, raw, and connection-oriented datagram.