C network programming?

Question

What libraries are the best (in terms of performance) for network programming in C on windows and UNIX?

I'm quite interested with respect to high frequency trading.

I have heard about BSD and POSIX but I wasnt sure if there were faster performance-specific libraries?

What are your requirements? Have you demonstrated that the OS-provided networking facilities do not meet those requirements? — Greg Hewgill
– Greg Hewgill, Commented Oct 24, 2011 at 1:22
The OS-provided networking is quite capable of saturating a gigabit ethernet connection. How fast is your connection to the internet? — Paul Tomblin
– Paul Tomblin, Commented Oct 24, 2011 at 1:29
What do you mean by OS-provided networking facilities? I wish to write some server-client demo programs in C and it was my understanding the original C standard contains no networking libraries, so I would have to use something else (like bsd, POSIX etc), atleast in the case of Windows? Im unsure about UNIX — user997112
– user997112, Commented Oct 24, 2011 at 2:02
The C Standard provides no networking libraries - 'tis true. But if you're working on a Unix-like platform, the 'standard' (as in 'provided by the OS') libraries will include BSD sockets, and those will perform well for you. On Windows, there's probably a wholly different interface (WinSock?). Or you can use Cygwin or Mingw to provide BSD sockets. They're all likely to perform well enough too. — Jonathan Leffler
– Jonathan Leffler, Commented Oct 24, 2011 at 6:00
@Jonathan WinSock is derived from BSD, so they are similiar. — glglgl
– glglgl, Commented Oct 24, 2011 at 6:03

glglgl · Accepted Answer · 2011-10-24 06:02:38Z

6

The fastest way would be to use the OS's networking functions: socket(), setsockopt(), connect(), listen(), send(), recv() etc. etc.

There are subtle differences between them on several OS's.

To cope with this, there are wrappers around them in several libraries, e.g. in Qt (at least, IIRC). I don't think anything will noticeably slow down if you use them...

answered Oct 24, 2011 at 6:02

glglgl

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3 Comments

user997112 Over a year ago

Hi, do i just need to include windows.h to get access to those?

glglgl Over a year ago

I suppose so, but I am not sure. Don't program much under windows.

Kenneth Wilke Over a year ago

A great resource on this type of low level network programming is beej.us/guide/bgnet . The content is mostly unix focused but has some commentary on usage in windows.

Pritesh Acharya · Accepted Answer · 2013-07-08 05:50:44Z

0

What about ZeroMQ. [http://www.zeromq.org/][1]

It's a faster, easy to code and also can be used as Message Queue.

answered Jul 8, 2013 at 5:50

Pritesh Acharya

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1 Comment

Joshua Briefman Over a year ago

You should mention some of the multiple options available instead of must a single one.

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