This section describes how to use the standard BSD socket interface for stream sockets and datagram sockets on a VxWorks target. It also describes how to use zbuf sockets, an alternative set of socket calls based on a data abstraction called the zbuf. These zbuf calls let you share data buffers (or portions of data buffers) between separate software modules.

Using sockets, processes can communicate within a single CPU, across a backplane, across an Ethernet, or across any connected combination of networks. Socket communications can occur between VxWorks tasks and host system processes in any combination. In all cases, the communications appear identical to the application--except, of course, for the speed of the communications.

One of the biggest advantages of socket communication is that it is a "homogeneous" mechanism: socket communications among processes are exactly the same, regardless of the location of the processes in the network or the operating system where they run. This is true even if you use zbuf sockets, which are fully interoperable with standard BSD sockets.