Internet Namespace (The GNU C Library)

### 16.6 The Internet Namespace ¶

This section describes the details of the protocols and socket naming conventions used in the Internet namespace.

Originally the Internet namespace used only IP version 4 (IPv4). With the growing number of hosts on the Internet, a new protocol with a larger address space was necessary: IP version 6 (IPv6). IPv6 introduces 128-bit addresses (IPv4 has 32-bit addresses) and other features, and will eventually replace IPv4.

To create a socket in the IPv4 Internet namespace, use the symbolic name `PF_INET` of this namespace as the namespace argument to `socket` or `socketpair`. For IPv6 addresses you need the macro `PF_INET6`. These macros are defined in `sys/socket.h`.

Macro: `int` PF_INET ¶

  This designates the IPv4 Internet namespace and associated family of protocols.

Macro: `int` PF_INET6 ¶

  This designates the IPv6 Internet namespace and associated family of protocols.

A socket address for the Internet namespace includes the following components:

- The address of the machine you want to connect to. Internet addresses can be specified in several ways; these are discussed in Internet Socket Address Formats, Host Addresses and Host Names.
- A port number for that machine. See Internet Ports.

You must ensure that the address and port number are represented in a canonical format called network byte order. See Byte Order Conversion, for information about this.