Resumen
One of the most pervasive and longest-lasting interfaces in software is the sockets API. Developed by the Computer Systems Research Group at the University of California at Berkeley, the sockets API was first released as part of the 4.1c BSD operating system in 1982. The Internet and the networking world in general have changed in very significant ways since the sockets API was first developed, but in many ways the API has had the effect of narrowing the way in which developers think about and write networked applications. This article briefly examines some of the conditions present when the sockets API was developed and considers how those conditions shaped the way in which networking code was written. High bandwidth, low latency, and multihoming are driving the development of alternatives to the sockets API. The communication paradigms supported by the sockets API must be expanded to allow for memory sharing across the kernel boundary, as well as for lower-latency mechanisms to deliver data to applications.