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How Processes Communicate

Understand how running processes communicate across different machines through sockets, and how addressing using IP addresses and ports directs messages to specific applications. Learn the roles of fixed and ephemeral ports in managing multiple application instances and enabling client-server communication.

Program vs. Process vs. Thread

We’ve loosely used the term ‘process’ pretty much interchangeably with the term ‘application’ in the last few chapters. Now, let’s now get a finer definition.

  • A program is simply an executable file. An application such as MS Word is one example.
  • A process is any currently running instance of a program. So one program can have several copies of it running at once. One MS Word program can have multiple open windows.
  • A
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