Network byte order

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.