🚀 go-pugleaf

The implementations are hidden so that the JVM providers (and perhaps
third-party library providers) can implement the sockets in the best manner
possible for the underlying environment.  Other categories of API in which
this occurs are file I/O, screen management, and event (keyboard and mouse)
management.

As for distinguishing between clients, the TCP/IP protocol takes care of
that.  It ensures that the incoming data is routed to the correct socket
based on the source IP address and port; what you see in Java is that all
requests from a given client will come through the same input stream.  Java
doesn't need to do anything other than map the underlying OS API into the
Java API.

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"Alan Shiers" <ashiers@hfx.eastlink.ca> wrote in message
news:3EE34D95.E0767B34@hfx.eastlink.ca...
> Hi there,
>
> It maybe that Sun has hidden the implementation from us when they made
> the java.io.Socket and java.io.ServerSocket classes, but out of
> curiosity, I was wondering how a socket is able to distinguish incoming
> data as belonging to a specific ongoing process?
>
> In other words,  in a client/server application, it is possible that you
> could have two or more clients logged on to the server application
> simultaneously. Naturally, it is possible to assume that, for each
> client logged on, each would be sending and receiving different pieces
> of data all at the same time.  This being the case, is the Socket or
> ServerSocket class able to distinguish the fact that certain incoming
> data is intended as a request from Client2 and not from Client3? After
> all, they all obtain their InputStreams and OutputStreams in the same
> manner by calling the respective methods of the Socket or ServerSocket
> classes [getInputStream() or getOutputStream()].
>
> Alan