XTI/TLI Versus Socket Interfaces

XTI/TLI and sockets are different methods of handling the same tasks. Although they provide mechanisms and services that are functionally similar, they do not provide one-to-one compatibility of routines or low-level services. Observe the similarities and differences between the XTI/TLI and socket-based interfaces before you decide to port an application.

The following issues are related to transport independence, and can have some bearing on RPC applications:

• Privileged ports – Privileged ports are an artifact of the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) implementation of the TCP/IP Internet Protocols. These ports are not portable. The notion of privileged ports is not supported in the transport-independent environment.

• Opaque addresses – Separating the portion of an address that names a host from the portion of an address that names the service at that host cannot be done in a transport-independent fashion. Be sure to change any code that assumes it can discern the host address of a network service.

• Broadcast – No transport-independent form of broadcast address exists.