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/**
* Provides the classes for implementing networking applications.
*
* <p> The java.net package can be roughly divided in two sections:</p>
* <ul>
* <li><p><i>A Low Level API</i>, which deals with the
* following abstractions:</p>
* <ul>
* <li><p><i>Addresses</i>, which are networking identifiers,
* like IP addresses.</p></li>
* <li><p><i>Sockets</i>, which are basic bidirectional data communication
* mechanisms.</p></li>
* <li><p><i>Interfaces</i>, which describe network interfaces. </p></li>
* </ul></li>
* <li> <p><i>A High Level API</i>, which deals with the following
* abstractions:</p>
* <ul>
* <li><p><i>URIs</i>, which represent
* Universal Resource Identifiers.</p></li>
* <li><p><i>URLs</i>, which represent
* Universal Resource Locators.</p></li>
* <li><p><i>Connections</i>, which represents connections to the resource
* pointed to by <i>URLs</i>.</p></li>
* </ul></li>
* </ul>
* <h2>Addresses</h2>
* <p>Addresses are used throughout the java.net APIs as either host
* identifiers, or socket endpoint identifiers.</p>
* <p>The {@link java.net.InetAddress} class is the abstraction representing an
* IP (Internet Protocol) address. It has two subclasses:
* <ul>
* <li>{@link java.net.Inet4Address} for IPv4 addresses.</li>
* <li>{@link java.net.Inet6Address} for IPv6 addresses.</li>
* </ul>
* <p>But, in most cases, there is no need to deal directly with the subclasses,
* as the InetAddress abstraction should cover most of the needed
* functionality.</p>
* <h3><b>About IPv6</b></h3>
* <p>Not all systems have support for the IPv6 protocol, and while the Java
* networking stack will attempt to detect it and use it transparently when
* available, it is also possible to disable its use with a system property.
* In the case where IPv6 is not available, or explicitly disabled,
* Inet6Address are not valid arguments for most networking operations any
* more. While methods like {@link java.net.InetAddress#getByName} are
* guaranteed not to return an Inet6Address when looking up host names, it
* is possible, by passing literals, to create such an object. In which
* case, most methods, when called with an Inet6Address will throw an
* Exception.</p>
* <h2>Sockets</h2>
* <p>Sockets are means to establish a communication link between machines over
* the network. The java.net package provides 4 kinds of Sockets:</p>
* <ul>
* <li>{@link java.net.Socket} is a TCP client API, and will typically
* be used to {@linkplain java.net.Socket#connect(SocketAddress)
* connect} to a remote host.</li>
* <li>{@link java.net.ServerSocket} is a TCP server API, and will
* typically {@linkplain java.net.ServerSocket#accept accept}
* connections from client sockets.</li>
* <li>{@link java.net.DatagramSocket} is a UDP endpoint API and is used
* to {@linkplain java.net.DatagramSocket#send send} and
* {@linkplain java.net.DatagramSocket#receive receive}
* {@linkplain java.net.DatagramPacket datagram packets}.</li>
* <li>{@link java.net.MulticastSocket} is a subclass of
* {@code DatagramSocket} used when dealing with multicast
* groups.</li>
* </ul>
* <p>Sending and receiving with TCP sockets is done through InputStreams and
* OutputStreams which can be obtained via the
* {@link java.net.Socket#getInputStream} and
* {@link java.net.Socket#getOutputStream} methods.</p>
* <h2>Interfaces</h2>
* <p>The {@link java.net.NetworkInterface} class provides APIs to browse and
* query all the networking interfaces (e.g. ethernet connection or PPP
* endpoint) of the local machine. It is through that class that you can
* check if any of the local interfaces is configured to support IPv6.</p>
* <p>Note, all conforming implementations must support at least one
* {@code NetworkInterface} object, which must either be connected to a
* network, or be a "loopback" interface that can only communicate with
* entities on the same machine.</p>
*
* <h2>High level API</h2>
* <p>A number of classes in the java.net package do provide for a much higher
* level of abstraction and allow for easy access to resources on the
* network. The classes are:
* <ul>
* <li>{@link java.net.URI} is the class representing a
* Universal Resource Identifier, as specified in RFC 2396.
* As the name indicates, this is just an Identifier and doesn't
* provide directly the means to access the resource.</li>
* <li>{@link java.net.URL} is the class representing a
* Universal Resource Locator, which is both an older concept for
* URIs and a means to access the resources.</li>
* <li>{@link java.net.URLConnection} is created from a URL and is the
* communication link used to access the resource pointed by the
* URL. This abstract class will delegate most of the work to the
* underlying protocol handlers like http or https.</li>
* <li>{@link java.net.HttpURLConnection} is a subclass of URLConnection
* and provides some additional functionalities specific to the
* HTTP protocol. This API has been superceded by the newer
HTTP client API described in the previous section.</li>
* </ul>
* <p>The recommended usage is to use {@link java.net.URI} to identify
* resources, then convert it into a {@link java.net.URL} when it is time to
* access the resource. From that URL, you can either get the
* {@link java.net.URLConnection} for fine control, or get directly the
* InputStream.
* <p>Here is an example:</p>
* <pre>
* URI uri = new URI("http://java.sun.com/");
* URL url = uri.toURL();
* InputStream in = url.openStream();
* </pre>
* <h2>Protocol Handlers</h2>
* As mentioned, URL and URLConnection rely on protocol handlers which must be
* present, otherwise an Exception is thrown. This is the major difference with
* URIs which only identify resources, and therefore don't need to have access
* to the protocol handler. So, while it is possible to create an URI with any
* kind of protocol scheme (e.g. {@code myproto://myhost.mydomain/resource/}),
* a similar URL will try to instantiate the handler for the specified protocol;
* if it doesn't exist an exception will be thrown.
* <p>By default the protocol handlers are loaded dynamically from the default
* location. It is, however, possible to deploy additional protocols handlers
* as {@link java.util.ServiceLoader services}. Service providers of type
* {@linkplain java.net.spi.URLStreamHandlerProvider} are located at
* runtime, as specified in the {@linkplain
* java.net.URL#URL(String,String,int,String) URL constructor}.
* <h2>Additional Specification</h2>
* <ul>
* <li><a href="doc-files/net-properties.html">
* Networking System Properties</a></li>
* </ul>
*
* @since 1.0
*/
package java.net;