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727: Mainline

The socket_number variable is an integer that identifies a raw socket created by a call to the socket function, which takes three arguments, two of which are macros defined in socket.h:

socket_number = socket (AF_INET, SOCK_STREAM, 0); 

AF_INET indicates that the communication is to be between two programs running on the Internet. SOCK_STREAM indicates that communication is ordinary in the sense that both the server and the client depend on each other to continue running and communicating. Finally, the 0 indicates that ordinary low-level protocols are to be used in the communication.