transport level interface

1 definition found

transport level interface - Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (26 May 2007) :

  Transport Layer Interface
  TLI
  Transport Level Interface
  
     <networking, programming> (TLI, or "Transport Level
     Interface") A protocol-independent interface for accessing
     network facilities, modelled after the ISO transport layer
     (level 4), that first appeared in Unix SVR3.
  
     TLI is defined by SVID as transport mechanism for networking
     interfaces, in preference to sockets, which are biased
     toward IP and friends.  A disavantage is that a process
     cannot use read/write directly, but has to use backends using
     stdin and stdout to communicate with the network
     connection.  TLI is implemented in SVR4 using the STREAMS
     interface.  It adds no new system calls, just a library,
     libnsl_s.a.  The major functions are t_open, t_bind,
     t_connect, t_listen, t_accept, t_snd, t_rcv, read, write.
  
     According to the Solaris t_open man page, XTI (X/OPEN
     Transport Interface) evolved from TLI, and supports the TLI
     API for compatibility, with some variations on semantics.
  
     (1999-06-10)