Using Socket

A Socket object contains (among other things) two Streams. One is for reading data coming in, and the other is for writing data out.

A server runs on a specific computer and has a socket that is bound to a specific port number. The server just waits, listening to the socket for a client to make a connection request.

On the client-side: The client knows the hostname of the machine on which the server is running and the port number to which the server is connected. To make a connection request, the client tries to rendezvous with the server on the server's machine and port.

If everything goes well, the server accepts the connection. Upon acceptance, the server gets a new socket bound to a different port. It needs a new socket (and consequently a different port number) so that it can continue to listen to the original socket for connection requests while tending to the needs of the connected client.

On the client side, if the connection is accepted, a socket is successfully created and the client can use the socket to communicate with the server. Note that the socket on the client side is not bound to the port number used to rendezvous with the server. Rather, the client is assigned a port number local to the machine on which the client is running.

The client and server can now communicate by writing to or reading from their sockets.