The socket interface
The Socket interface is the Unix application program interface (API) to the TCP/IP protocol stack
The socket interface has become the de-facto standard way of using TCP/IP services from an application program even in other operating systems (such as the Winsock of Windows)
Different service and application program interfaces as such are not included in the protocol definitions but the socket interface is a useful and educational de-facto standard
The Unix I/O paradigm and network I/O
Adding network I/O to Unix
The socket abstraction = a generalization of the Unix file access mechanism
The socket interface is described in pretty much detail and with illustrative examples in chapter 20 of Comer