I bought this book for work. It left me with a good understanding of Multicast and Raw Sockets, the two subjects I was mostly interested in.

The Best series of books to learn Network programming from. The BEST in the world. Nothing comes close.

If you are reading this review you probably are looking for a comprehensive text on socket programming. Look no further. This is the One. You can stop reading reviews trying to find the perfect one and go hit the Add To Shopping Cart button with confidence. Detailed, comprehensive and clear. A favorite.

This book consists of "in the trenches" information Mr. Stevens learned over the years by reading source, testing thoroughly, documenting extensively, and assembling carefully all this data into one heck of a book on Unix programming. I feel certain in declaring that many who've developed code on Unix know instantly of Stevens' works. This update to his book appears just as thorough.

I do agree with a previous reviewer who was unhappy with the code samples' dependency on a header file in the back of the book. It's a clumsy technique, but it's difficult to imagine another way to accomplish the goals of including the header.

This book is excellent. I had previously bought "Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment" by the same author and I loved it so now that I have to do network programming in Linux I got a copy of UNP. The book is well organized and has a lot more information than I expected (Raw sockets, Packet capture, IPv6 etc). Everything is explained clearly and with a lot of examples. It's a shame that the author passed away because I would buy any other book he wrote. Buy this book, it's expensive but It's so professional that is a "must have" for anyone that's going to be programming network applications in UNIX systems.

Thank you, Richard Stevens. Rest in Peace.

The book contains everything that I want to know about the Unix Sockets API. The book is well structured, and the explanations are generally good. I would give it 4½ stars if it was possible.

I do have a few minor gripes though. The text can be a bit dull compared to other books. I bought "Programming with POSIX(R) Threads" by David R. Butenhof at the same time, and this book is much more entertaining while still factual and correct.

I dislike that all the examples in the book uses a special header defined in the Appendix. That makes it impossible to use snippets of code from the examples to make your own applications.

This is by far the most comprehensive, easy to understand book regarding Unix Network Programming I have come across. Professors in most major university treat teaching unix network programming like brain surgery, they make it as difficult as possible. The book explain every concept in an easy to understand language, TCP, UDP,SCTP, etc, you name it is all here. There is so much to learn from this book for all users novice and advanced and it also makes an excellent reference book. Every unix network programmer should have this book by their side, this is the unix networking programming bible. Like we say in wall street, a great investment, highly recommended.

This is by far the most comprehensive, easy to understand book regarding Unix Network Programming I have come across. Professors in most major university treat teaching unix network programming like brain surgery, they make it as difficult as possible. The book explain every concept in an easy to understand language, TCP, UDP,SCTP, etc, you name it is all here. There is so much to learn from this book for all users novice and advanced and it also makes an excellent reference book. Every unix network programmer should have this book by their side, this is the unix networking programming bible. Like we say in wall street, a great investment, highly recommended.

I was required to use this book for my networking programming class. I'm in my senior year of college and having quite a bit of experience with textbook, I can say with confidence that this is one of the better textbooks out there. You can definately teach yourself network programming with this book and the accompanied source examples.... makes a handy reference guide as well. Worth the investment for Computer Science Engineers.

I was required to use this book for my networking programming class. I'm in my senior year of college and having quite a bit of experience with textbook, I can say with confidence that this is one of the better textbooks out there. You can definately teach yourself network programming with this book and the accompanied source examples.... makes a handy reference guide as well. Worth the investment for Computer Science Engineers.

Received the book in great condition in a timely manner. What more can I say?! Oh yea, it was reasonably priced too.

Im an Australian final year undergrad CS student, we used this as the text for a course 'Network Programming'. This book is very well written and explains not only the process of writing networked applications using C, but also how the actual protocols such as TCP, UDP etc work. This gives you a solid understanding of the 'whys' of network programming and not just the 'hows'. Overall this is a great book for those wanting to learn about network programming in Unix systems or those wanting a refresher. Highly recommended.

With the updated third edition, this book keeps getting better and better with age. I've been using this book since 1991 when I was just a green programmer who got assigned to his first real Unix project. I'm not one who dishes out praises lightly, so for me to say that this is _the_ best network programming book around, there must be good reasons. Stevens had a way of taking a complex subject and in a few pages, if you follow the text and examples, making it crystal clear. The new authors, I believe, are continuing this fine tradition.

Practically everything about network programming is here. Many examples on how to use socket, bind, listen, select, accept, connect, read, write, you name it. Theare are lots of sample code on how to write robust TCP/UDP clients and servers. The programming style is clear and easy to understand. The new edition has plenty of updates to follow the POSIX standards.

This book will not make you an expert overnight, but it will make you an expert. There are other network programming books out there, to be sure, but this one is at the top.

I cannot fathom a guess as to how many times the books in this series have saved my in project work over the years. The only drawback with this series is that some publisher should endeavor to keep them up to date. Serious Unix system programmers must have copies of the complete series.

It deserve place on your shelf. I just wanted to know more about sockets. The choice was right. There is no more mystery. I didn't go into details about code. That was not my goal. The goal was socket. I got what I was expecting to get.

This book, as with all other Stevens books, can be used as either a tutorial or reference. The depth of information here is unparalleled. I continue to be impressed with the detail in this book. Fenner and Rudoff have done an outstanding job of maintaining quality and tradition this invaluable reference. Avid Stevens fans will not be disappointed.

3rd edition updates include:
*IPv6 added
*POSIX 1003.1-2001 added
*XTI dropped
*T/TCP dropped
*SCTP added
*Key Management Sockets for use with IPSec Added
*Machines used for examples updated
*Other material updated where appropriate (including new functions)

I bought this book a year ago along with Stevens "Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment" I read most of this book as a tutorial on network programming. I continue to use it as reference. I also read all of APUE. Since then I've added TCP/IP Illustrated, Volume 1 and UNIX Network Programming, Volume 2 to my collection. I've come to apprecaite the painstaking detail, pure clarity, and conciseness that are the hallmarks of all Stevens books.

I'm thankful that Rudoff and Fenner updated this classic. This book is all most will need for the sockets API. I don't have the second edition, but I'm quite happy with the third. It's good to have something that speaks to IPv6. This is the best of the old and new. I wouldn't mind seeing an updated version of TCP/IP Illustrated volumes 1 and 2 either if Fenner and Rudoff are up to it.

All of the Stevens books compliment each other really well. Truth be told, the more Stevens books you read the better off you are.

I bought this book about a month ago and used it very extensively for my UNIX programming project. While this book is great and very comprehensive, I did find code examples very confusing. As coping a variable from the socket struct into variable and then from this variable into custom structure, then manipulating this custom structure and finally printing. It would be better to use as less transformation as possible. Because it makes very hard to find what this variable has and where it came from. At the end all I'm looking for is simple but good example of how to use sockets...etc, it's not a C programming book.

I learned both network programming and threaded programming (pthreads) from this book (the 1998 2nd edition), and it was a great teacher. I used it to design and implement a client server protocol for a research project involving 10 machines and about 15 communicating processes. One of the things I really appreciate about the book is the detailed examples.

After the concepts (a server 'listens' for a connection; a client initiates a connection) and basics of packets and sockets, the book presents a simple tcp server and client -- the server simply echos back whatever the client sends. Next, it discusses what can go wrong with the simple version, and presents an improved echo server that behave better when the client crashes (and likewise an improved client).

The book continues to improve on the basic client/server, including address resolution, and servers that handle multiple clients using forks, threads, non-blocking I/O. This is all I needed to learn from the book, and it's all in the first half of the book.

Particularly useful is Chapter 27, Client-Server Design Alternatives. To me it alone was worth the price of the book. Here the book discusses concurrent servers with three basic architectures:

(1) non-blocking I/O, no threads or forks (advantage: full control of resource allocation; disadvantag: complexity);

(2) spawn a thread or fork for each client (simplest implementation; potential problem of too many children);

(3) servers that pre-allocate a pool of threads or forks (a happy medium; faster).

Other chapters discuss broadcasting, multicasting, out of band data, routing sockets, and raw sockets; all topics I hope to learn some day. Again, this is a great book. The 3rd edition brings it up to date for IPV6 and numerous small improvements.

It would be difficult to put value on a book that has been a classic text and a reference in academia and in the real world in the context of Network Programming for over a decade. Richard Stevens published the ever-popular Unix Network Programming [UNP] back in 1990, followed the second edition in 1998. With a dedication to the memory of R. Stevens, the UNP book found itself two new authors, Bill Fenner and Andrew M. Rudoff, who would write the third edition of this book. The third edition has many updates, a new look and feel and many of new chapters that cover the topics more applicable these days. In my opinion, it is still the most valuable and profound text in the context of Network Programming.

For those of us who have the first two editions of this book, the third edition has the following changes in effect:
ý IPv6 updates. In the second version of the book, IPv6 was merely a draft and the sections covering IPv6 has been updated to take these changes into effect.

ý POSIX updates. The functions/APIs and examples have been updated to reflect the changes to the latest version of the POSIX specification (1003.1-2001)
ý SCTP coverage. 3 new chapters that cover this new reliable, message-based transport protocol have been added.
ý Key Management Sockets coverage. Network security and its applicability and use with IPsec.
ý Updated Operating Systems and machines that are used to run the examples in the book.
ý Some topics such as Transaction TCP and X/Open Transport Interface have been dropped.

Many topics and sections have been updated with the authors' comments. These comments even though simple for someone new to the profession, are extremely useful as they are like hints and tips from one developer to the next to help you out in your next programming assignment.

If this is the only edition of the book that you are reading, you are in for a treat. Topics in Network Programming are covered in detail and using concrete programming examples that all of us can relate to - all Unix, but what else is there?! All kidding aside, the topics are covered well enough that they are useful information under any Operating System. The concepts don't change; sockets are sockets under any Operating System. The function call is different, but one needs to go thru the same steps under any environment.

Being the most popular networking protocol, TCP/IP is covered in Part I of the book. One needs to have prior understanding of the TCP/IP protocol and the OSI model, however. If this is the first time you are looking at the programming aspects of networking protocols, Part I of this book will cover the basics. It starts you off with a couple of simple examples such as daytime client and a daytime server and it builds on that as the reader reads along. TCP, UDP and SCTP (Stream Control Transmission Protocol) are covered in brief in Part I, and basic concepts such as the three-way handshake of TCP and the four-way handshake of SCTP are depicted.

Part II of the book covers sockets and socket programming. Topics such as the socket Address Structure in IPv4 and IPv6 for TCP, UDP and SCTP are covered and examples (the same daytime client/server) are given to convey the point to the reader. It is important to mention here that all the topics and concepts are depicted for the three transport protocols: TCP, UDP and SCTP. Every single socket API under the Unix programming environment is covered and examples are given for each function call to show the reader how the function can be utilized. An entire chapter has been dedicated to Socket Options and how they are used/can be used for best results. Hints are given throughout the chapter to tell the user about the pitfalls and best practices of each option.

After the basics have been covered, various I/O models are depicted in detail and examples are shown to convey the pro's and con's of each I/O model. The five I/O models used thru the book and available under the Unix environment are:
ý Blocking I/O
ý Non-blocking I/O
ý I/O Multiplexing (using select and poll)
ý Signal driven I/O
ý Asynchronous I/O

SCTP - Stream Control Transmission Protocol, a new IEFT standard are covered in later chapters of 9 and 10 and again in chapter 23. The two interface models of SCTP (one-to-one and one-to-many) are covered in detail, and their differences with TCP are also explained in full. The client/server example that has been used throughout the book is ported to use the new SCTP protocol. The authors then go into great detail explaining the problems that SCTP solves over TCP and where and how it would be useful to use SCTP.

Advanced topics such as IPv4 and IPv6 portability, Unix Domain Protocols, Multicasting and advanced Socket programming for UDP, TCP and SCTP cover the rest of the chapters in this book.
Various options for interoperability between IPv4 and IPv6 start off the last section of the book. A chapter on Advanced I/O functions brings the reader a new perspective of how complicated Network Programming can become. Non-blocking I/O, befits and examples are covered in chapter 16. The topics on Multicasting, and adding reliability to UDP are probably my favorite chapters in this book. The Time Server that has been used throughout the book is re-coded to become a multicast application. Some issues that arise when designing multicast applications such as multicast on a WAN are also discussed.
The third edition of the UNP book is as good as ever. The updates truly reflect solutions to today's challenges in Network Programming. Bill Fenner and Andrew Rudoff did an amazing job continuing the work a true legend in the field of Computer Science.