The most common communication styles involve making a connection to a particular other socket, and then exchanging data with that socket over and over. Making a connection is asymmetric; one side (the client) acts to request a connection, while the other side (the server) makes a socket and waits for the connection request.
| Connecting | What the client program must do. |
| Listening | How a server program waits for requests. |
| Accepting Connections | What the server does when it gets a request. |
| Who is Connected | Getting the address of the other side of a connection. |
| Transferring Data | How to send and receive data. |
| Byte Stream Example | An example program: a client for communicating over a byte stream socket in the Internet namespace. |
| Server Example | A corresponding server program. |
| Out-of-Band Data | This is an advanced feature. |