Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols
Running multiple TCP/IP applications from multiple vendors on a PC used to be a precarious proposition, due to differences in implementation among vendors. But in 1991, about 30 application, network, and OS vendors formed a group that created and promoted WinSock 1.1. It's an open Berkeley Unix-style Socket API that makes it possible to run any WinSock-compatible application with any WinSock-compliant TCP/IP stack. This revolutionized the Windows TCP/IP market and helped popularize the Internet.
Now, WinSock version 2 has appeared in its first draft form, and it promises to liberate other network applications from dependency on a single transport protocol. WinSock 2 will let software vendors create applications that work automatically and smoothly with a variety
of network transports. This new API will specifically work with TCP/IP, IPX/SPX, DECnet and OSI, but its architecture will support additional transports that are plugged in through the service provider interface.
WinSock 2 will work with Windows 95 and Windows NT, but not Windows 3.1. It allows applications to exploit capabilities in ATM, ISDN, and wireless technologies.
The new WinSock will also include enhanced capabilities. Perhaps the most important of these is the ability to share sockets across multiple tasks, which allows one application or thread to share a data stream with another application or thread. Under WinSock 1, this was very difficult for a programmer to achieve.
"What WinSock 2 means for developers is it lets them build a single version of a program that will work with a multitude of popular networks," says Martin Hall, chairman of the WinSock group and chief technical officer of StarDust Technologies (Campbell, CA, (408) 879-8080 or martinh@stardust.com or http://www.s
tardust.com), a company that offers WinSock-based interoperability testing and consulting services. Hall predicts that users will see new WinSock 2-based applications in the first half of 1996.
WinSock 2 Enhances Connectivity
