Interfacing UNIX to Data Communications Networks
Fabio Panzieri, Brian Randell · IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering · 1985
We propose an interface for use from within UNIX1 user programs for communicating over multiple and varied local and wide area networks. This interface aids the design of a distributed application program by hiding the actual communications protocols used over each network, and providing instead simple primitives for sending and receiving (possibly large) datagrams, using a simple standardized network addressing scheme based on apair.