Chapter 2

Interprocess Communication

An Overview

2.1 Introduction

Interprocess communication is at the heart of distributed computing. User processes run on host machines that are connected to one another through a network, and the network carries signals that propagate from one process to another. These signals represent data.* We separate interprocess communication into two parts:

Networking: This deals with how processes communicate with one another via the various protocol layers. The important issues in networking are routing, error control, flow control, authentication, etc. This is the internal view.

Users’ view: User processes have an abstract high-level view of the interprocess communication medium. This is the external view. An average ...

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