Socket is an endpoint of a bidirectional inter-process communication flow. This often refers to a process flow over a network connection, but by no means is limited to such.
In computer networking, a socket is an endpoint of a bidirectional inter-process communication flow across an Internet Protocol-based computer network, such as the Internet.
An internet socket address is the combination of an IP address (the location of the computer) and a port (which is mapped to the application program process) into a single identity, much like one end of a telephone connection is the combination of a phone number and a particular extension.
An example IPv4 socket appears as: 10.1.1.1:80
An example IPv6 socket appears as: [fe80::1]:80 (Note the brackets)
The term is believed to have originated with the Berkeley Sockets API for Unix ca. 1983.
