Raw socket programming
Everything we send and receive on the Internet involves packets; every web page and e-mail we receive comes as a series of packets, and everything we send leaves as a series of packets. Data breaks into packets of a certain size in bytes. Each packet carries the information to identify its destination, source, and other details of the protocols that the Internet uses, along with a part of the body of our data. Network packets are split into three parts:
- Header: This contains the instructions about the data carried by the packet
- Payload: This is the data of a packet
- Trailer: This is the trailer, notify the end of the packet to receiving device
Headers for protocols like TCP/IP are provided by the kernel or operating system stack, but we can provide custom headers to this protocol with raw sockets. Raw sockets have support in the native socket API in Linux, but support is absent in Windows. Even though raw sockets are rarely used in applications, they are extensively used...
