For those professionals new to networking and UNIX system programming, two introductory chapters are provided. The author then presents the programming interfaces most important to building communication software in System V, including STREAMS, the Transport Layer Interface library, Sockets, and Remote Procedure Calls. So that your designs are not limited to user-level, the author also explains how to write kernel-level communication software, including STREAMS drivers, modules, and multiplexors.
Many examples are provided, including an Ethernet driver and a transport-level multiplexing driver. In the final chapter, the author brings the material from previous chapters together, presenting the design of a SLIP communication package.
Stephen A. Rago, one of the Bell Laboratories developers who built UNIX System V, Release 4, currently works as a manger at EMC, specializing in file servers and file systems.