Ports and addresses are usually specified by calls using the network
byte ordering convention. Network byte order is also known as big
endian byte ordering, where the high order byte defines significance. Network byte ordering allows hosts using different architectures
to exchange address information. See accept(), bind(), htonl(), htons(), ntohl(), and ntohs() for more information about network
byte order.
Notes: - The socket interface does not handle application data byte ordering
differences. Application writers must handle byte order differences
themselves, or use higher level interfaces such as remote procedure
calls (RPC). For description of the RPC calls, see z/OS Communications Server: IP Programmer's Guide
and Reference.
- If you use the socket API, your application must handle the issues
related to different data representations on different hardware platforms.
For character based data, some hosts use ASCII, while other hosts
use EBCDIC. Your application must handle translation between the two
representations.