Socket Programming: TCP/IP Communication Explained

This talks about the socket API, which is a tool that programmers use to make apps talk to each other over the Internet. The good news is, that you don’t need to know all the complex stuff about how networks or data communication work to start building Internet-based apps. If you learn just a few basic things, you can already create useful and creative applications.

However, if you want to make your apps more efficient, reliable, and able to handle many users or locations, then it’s helpful to understand how the network and its protocols work.

This block explains how apps like email, web browsers, and video calls work over the Internet. Interestingly, these services are not built into the Internet itself. Instead, the Internet just gives a way for computers to send and receive data. All the services we use are created by software programs running on those computers. This setup is very flexible — we can even create new kinds of apps without needing to change how the Internet works.