socket connect() vs bind()

Solution 1:

To make understanding better , lets find out where exactly bind and connect comes into picture,

Further to positioning of two calls , as clarified by Sourav,

bind() associates the socket with its local address [that's why server side binds, so that clients can use that address to connect to server.] connect() is used to connect to a remote [server] address, that's why is client side, connect [read as: connect to server] is used.

We cannot use them interchangeably (even when we have client/server on same machine) because of specific roles and corresponding implementation.

I will further recommend to correlate these calls TCP/IP handshake .

So , who will send SYN here , it will be connect() . While bind() is used for defining the communication end point.

Hope this helps!!

Solution 2:

The one liner : bind() to own address, connect() to remote address.

Quoting from the man page of bind()

bind() assigns the address specified by addr to the socket referred to by the file descriptor sockfd. addrlen specifies the size, in bytes, of the address structure pointed to by addr. Traditionally, this operation is called "assigning a name to a socket".

and, from the same for connect()

The connect() system call connects the socket referred to by the file descriptor sockfd to the address specified by addr.

To clarify,

• bind() associates the socket with its local address [that's why server side binds, so that clients can use that address to connect to server.]
• connect() is used to connect to a remote [server] address, that's why is client side, connect [read as: connect to server] is used.

Solution 3:

bind tells the running process to claim a port. i.e, it should bind itself to port 80 and listen for incomming requests. with bind, your process becomes a server. when you use connect, you tell your process to connect to a port that is ALREADY in use. your process becomes a client. the difference is important: bind wants a port that is not in use (so that it can claim it and become a server), and connect wants a port that is already in use (so it can connect to it and talk to the server)