What types of apps are developed today using socket programming?

Question

I've worked in business application development for a while but have never done socket programming. I know that all HTTP transport implicitly involves socket communication but this is all abstracted when using most software frameworks. So I was curious what types of apps developed today involve socket programming?

Answer 1

Any kind of proprietary communication protocol running over UDP or TCP would fit this description. We have a handful of applications that communicate with embedded systems using TCP and UDP, all using specialized protocols.

Answer 2

An application involving networking or network protocols could involve socket programming. This would mean UDP, TCP, peer-to-peer, etc.

Answer 3

Financial companies, especially ones in algorithmic trading area, rely on TCP/IP heavily. That ranges from third party communication products like Tibco to FIX over TCP sockets to in-house frameworks over UDP/multicast.

Answer 4

Here's what I developped in my own spare time (took me 2 years actually) :

(1) program I called "big chief"
(2) program I called "the manager"

Here's how it works : First launch the managers on every machine that is configured for that. Once launched, the big chief asks for dlls to create a list of sites to "suck". It cut them in "packets" and sends each packet to a "(2) manager"

Each manager has a pool of "workers" (threads). As soon as it gets the list, it activates each thread with one url to "suck". After some time, once all the list is done, the manager make a big "results" packet then send it back to the "big chief".

It can go far further than just "simply" suck urls. (You can define a whole "path" with get and posts, and the cookies follows the path, which means stuff like "going to xx.com, simulate valid button, then go to xx.com/valid.php (with all the cookies and so on set) then simulate something else.)

Yep, it's a mini-google.

I used TCP for "big chief" and "manager" communication with my own protocol and compression before sending.

One of its powerful feature is that you can extend it very easyli. I've used my PC for the "big chief" and 6 other Internet connexions for the managers (including a huge one from my old school). I am able to add as many "managers" as I want :).

PS : Why am I talking about that ? Because I'm proud of it and it's not used at all. It's on my computer, I've sucked a site that is hard to ... suck (pbase.com) and they've probably seen incoming connexions from the States, China, and so on (whereas I'm in France) (yep it does do support public proxies as well)... I'm so proud of a product that is not used at all...