XTI/TLI Versus Socket Interfaces

XTI/TLI and sockets are different methods of handling the same tasks. Mostly, 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. They are not portable. The notion of privileged ports is not supported in the transport-independent environment.

• Opaque addresses - There is no transport-independent way of separating the portion of an address that names a host from the portion of an address that names the service at that host. Be sure to change any code that assumes it can discern the host address of a network service.

• Broadcast - There is no transport-independent form of broadcast address.