Address Formats

An address format indicates what set of rules was used in creating network addresses of a particular format.

For example, in the Internet communication domain, a host address is a 32-bit value that is encoded using one of four rules based on the type of network on which the host resides.

Each communication domain has different rules for valid socket names and interpretation of names. After a socket is created, it can be given a name according to the rules of the communication domain in which it was created. For example, in the UNIX communication domain, sockets are named with operating system path names. A socket can be named /dev/foo. Sockets normally exchange data only with sockets in the same communication domain.