netintro(4) BSD Kernel Interfaces Manual netintro(4)

NAME

 networking -- introduction to networking facilities

SYNOPSIS

 #include <sys/socket.h>
 #include <net/route.h>
 #include <net/if.h>

DESCRIPTION

 This section is a general introduction to the networking facilities
 available in the system. Documentation in this part of section 4 is bro-
 ken up into three areas: protocol families (domains), protocols, and
 network interfaces.
 All network protocols are associated with a specific protocol family. A
 protocol family provides basic services to the protocol implementation to
 allow it to function within a specific network environment. These ser-
 vices may include packet fragmentation and reassembly, routing, address-
 ing, and basic transport. A protocol family may support multiple methods
 of addressing, though the current protocol implementations do not. A
 protocol family is normally comprised of a number of protocols, one per
 socket(2)  type. It is not required that a protocol family support all
 socket types. A protocol family may contain multiple protocols support-
 ing the same socket abstraction.
 A protocol supports one of the socket abstractions detailed in socket(2) .
 A specific protocol may be accessed either by creating a socket of the
 appropriate type and protocol family, or by requesting the protocol
 explicitly when creating a socket. Protocols normally accept only one
 type of address format, usually determined by the addressing structure
 inherent in the design of the protocol family/network architecture. Cer-
 tain semantics of the basic socket abstractions are protocol specific.
 All protocols are expected to support the basic model for their particu-
 lar socket type, but may, in addition, provide non-standard facilities or
 extensions to a mechanism. For example, a protocol supporting the
 SOCK_STREAM abstraction may allow more than one byte of out-of-band data
 to be transmitted per out-of-band message.
 A network interface is similar to a device interface. Network interfaces
 comprise the lowest layer of the networking subsystem, interacting with
 the actual transport hardware. An interface may support one or more pro-
 tocol families and/or address formats. The SYNOPSIS section of each net-
 work interface entry gives a sample specification of the related drivers
 for use in providing a system description to the config(8) program. The
 DIAGNOSTICS section lists messages which may appear on the console and/or
 in the system error log, /var/log/messages (see syslogd(8) ), due to
 errors in device operation.

PROTOCOLS

 The system currently supports the Internet protocols, the Xerox Network
 Systems(tm) protocols, and some of the ISO OSI protocols. Raw socket
 interfaces are provided to the IP protocol layer of the Internet, and to
 the IDP protocol of Xerox NS. Consult the appropriate manual pages in
 this section for more information regarding the support for each protocol
 family.

ADDRESSING

 Associated with each protocol family is an address format. All network
 address adhere to a general structure, called a sockaddr, described
 below. However, each protocol imposes finer and more specific structure,
 generally renaming the variant, which is discussed in the protocol family
 manual page alluded to above.
 struct sockaddr {
 u_char sa_len;
 u_char sa_family;
 char sa_data[14];
 };
 The field sa_len contains the total length of the structure, which may
 exceed 16 bytes. The following address values for sa_family are known to
 the system (and additional formats are defined for possible future imple-
 mentation):
 #define AF_UNIX 1 /* local to host (pipes) */
 #define AF_INET 2 /* IPv4: UDP, TCP, etc. */
 #define AF_INET6 30 /* IPv6: UDP, TCP, etc. */
 #define AF_NS 6 /* Xerox NS protocols */
 #define AF_CCITT 10 /* CCITT protocols, X.25 etc */
 #define AF_HYLINK 15 /* NSC Hyperchannel */
 #define AF_ISO 18 /* ISO protocols */

ROUTING

 Mac OS X provides some packet routing facilities. The kernel maintains a
 routing information database, which is used in selecting the appropriate
 network interface when transmitting packets.
 A user process (or possibly multiple co-operating processes) maintains
 this database by sending messages over a special kind of socket. This
 supplants fixed size ioctl(2)  used in earlier releases.
 This facility is described in route(4) .

INTERFACES

 Each network interface in a system corresponds to a path through which
 messages may be sent and received. A network interface usually has a
 hardware device associated with it, though certain interfaces such as the
 loopback interface, lo(4) , do not.
 The following ioctl calls may be used to manipulate network interfaces.
 The ioctl is made on a socket (typically of type SOCK_DGRAM) in the
 desired domain. Most of the requests supported in earlier releases take
 an ifreq structure as its parameter. This structure has the form
 struct ifreq {
 #define IFNAMSIZ 16
 char ifr_name[IFNAMSIZ]; /* if name, e.g. "en0" */
 union {
 struct sockaddr ifru_addr;
 struct sockaddr ifru_dstaddr;
 struct sockaddr ifru_broadaddr;
 short ifru_flags;
 int ifru_metric;
 caddr_t ifru_data;
 } ifr_ifru;
 #define ifr_addr ifr_ifru.ifru_addr /* address */
 #define ifr_dstaddr ifr_ifru.ifru_dstaddr /* other end of p-to-p link */
 #define ifr_broadaddr ifr_ifru.ifru_broadaddr /* broadcast address */
 #define ifr_flags ifr_ifru.ifru_flags /* flags */
 #define ifr_metric ifr_ifru.ifru_metric /* metric */
 #define ifr_data ifr_ifru.ifru_data /* for use by interface */
 };
 Calls which are now deprecated are:
 SIOCSIFADDR Set interface address for protocol family. Following the
 address assignment, the ``initialization'' routine for
 the interface is called.
 SIOCSIFDSTADDR Set point to point address for protocol family and inter-
 face.
 SIOCSIFBRDADDR Set broadcast address for protocol family and interface.
 Ioctl requests to obtain addresses and requests both to set and retrieve
 other data are still fully supported and use the ifreq structure:
 SIOCGIFADDR Get interface address for protocol family.
 SIOCGIFDSTADDR Get point to point address for protocol family and inter-
 face.
 SIOCGIFBRDADDR Get broadcast address for protocol family and interface.
 SIOCSIFFLAGS Set interface flags field. If the interface is marked
 down, any processes currently routing packets through the
 interface are notified; some interfaces may be reset so
 that incoming packets are no longer received. When
 marked up again, the interface is reinitialized.
 SIOCGIFFLAGS Get interface flags.
 SIOCSIFMETRIC Set interface routing metric. The metric is used only by
 user-level routers.
 SIOCGIFMETRIC Get interface metric.
 There are two requests that make use of a new structure:
 SIOCAIFADDR An interface may have more than one address associated
 with it in some protocols. This request provides a means
 to add additional addresses (or modify characteristics of
 the primary address if the default address for the
 address family is specified). Rather than making sepa-
 rate calls to set destination or broadcast addresses, or
 network masks (now an integral feature of multiple proto-
 cols) a separate structure is used to specify all three
 facets simultaneously (see below). One would use a
 slightly tailored version of this struct specific to each
 family (replacing each sockaddr by one of the family-spe-
 cific type). Where the sockaddr itself is larger than
 the default size, one needs to modify the ioctl identi-
 fier itself to include the total size, as described in
 ioctl.
 SIOCDIFADDR This requests deletes the specified address from the list
 associated with an interface. It also uses the
 if_aliasreq structure to allow for the possibility of
 protocols allowing multiple masks or destination
 addresses, and also adopts the convention that specifica-
 tion of the default address means to delete the first
 address for the interface belonging to the address family
 in which the original socket was opened.
 SIOCGIFCONF Get interface configuration list. This request takes an
 ifconf structure (see below) as a value-result parameter.
 The ifc_len field should be initially set to the size of
 the buffer pointed to by ifc_buf. On return it will con-
 tain the length, in bytes, of the configuration list.
 /*
 * Structure used in SIOCAIFADDR request.
 */
 struct ifaliasreq {
 char ifra_name[IFNAMSIZ]; /* if name, e.g. "en0" */
 struct sockaddr ifra_addr;
 struct sockaddr ifra_broadaddr;
 struct sockaddr ifra_mask;
 };
 /*
 * Structure used in SIOCGIFCONF request.
 * Used to retrieve interface configuration
 * for machine (useful for programs which
 * must know all networks accessible).
 */
 struct ifconf {
 int ifc_len; /* size of associated buffer */
 union {
 caddr_t ifcu_buf;
 struct ifreq *ifcu_req;
 } ifc_ifcu;
 #define ifc_buf ifc_ifcu.ifcu_buf /* buffer address */
 #define ifc_req ifc_ifcu.ifcu_req /* array of structures returned */
 };

SEE ALSO

 ioctl(2) , socket(2) , intro(4), config(5) , routed(8) 

HISTORY

 The netintro manual appeared in 4.3BSD-Tahoe.
4.2 Berkeley Distribution November 30, 1993 4.2 Berkeley Distribution