Thanks for your answers vijayan,
Originally Posted by
vijayan121 
a socket is *one* end of a two-way communications link.
a BSD socket maintains a separate send buffer and a receive buffer, and is full-duplex (you can both send and receive data on it). to send or receive data, you need two sockets (one at either end).
nice explanation!
but:
>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duplex_(telecommunications)
Originally Posted by
vijayan121 in your first example, you are trying to use the *same* socket at both ends.
As far as i can understand full-duplex is called when you can send and receive at
the same time. So if a socket is a full duplex communications endpoint then you can send and receive data at the same time {from the same endpoint}. In the first example i wanted to do exactly this thing that is send and listen at the same time. Because these procedures are blocking, i thought that a way to circumvent this behaviour was to create a fork...
Originally Posted by
vijayan121 create *two* sockets, one for the client and another for the server.
but i don't have a client-server scheme but a peer-to-peer scheme. The way i see it each peer must be a client and a server at the same time. Is there any other way to make peer-to-peer conversation? I am asking because it is the first i get exposed to the concept of p2p communication and not client-server
Originally Posted by
vijayan121 (eg. socketpair does this for UNIX sockets. http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=socketpair)
after forking, close the client socket in the server, and the server socket in the client.
and things should be ok.
+---------------+ +---------------+
| | | |
| peer1 | | peer2 |
| |port1 port2| |
| sock1----|---------------|----sock2 |
| | | |
| | | |
+---------------+ +---------------+
I can't use socketpair because according to the man page
This call is currently implemented only for the UNIX domain.
and i want internet domain....
Originally Posted by
vijayan121 > Could this diversion be "easily" done, by using ncurses
yes.
I will try to do it this weekend...
Thanks again for your effort and your time,
Although i have a found a kind of solution to this problem {the one i posted in my second post with the use of 2 sockets per peer}, i keep asking because either i don't understand the concept of a socket, port,etc,... or i am doing something terribly wrong...
with regards,
nicolas
PS: as a side effect question what is the relation between a socket and a port. I mean a socket is a special kind of file descriptor, since when i use file descriptors i don't use ports, why we have to use ports when we use a socket?