Short for
Windows Socket, an
API for developing
Windows programs that can communicate with other machines via the
TCP/IP protocol.
Windows 95 and
Windows NT comes with
Dynamic Link Library (DLL) called
winsock.dll that implements the API and acts as the glue between Windows programs and TCP/IP connections.
In addition to the Microsoft version of winsock.dll, there are other freeware and shareware versions of winsock.dll. However, there is no official standard for the Winsock API, so each implementation differs in minor ways.