BSD:sockets::SVID:(what?)

[Robert C. White Jr.]

in article <379 at halley.UUCP>, bc at halley.UUCP (Bill Crews) says:
> 
> Really?  SVID, Issue 2, Volume describes TLI, which is so close to sockets that 
> many wonder why a new facility was introduced.  The implementation differs, but
> that wasn't the question.

Pardon my showing my dis-information ;-) but I would like to know what
the (omitted) "sockets" are.  I have been up to my elbows in SVR3 for
a while and this bit above now has me totally confused.  The level of
interaction of a TLI compliant device seems different than the level at
which "sockets" seem to be refrenced; my confusion seems to stem from
several vague refrences, to whit:

When people talk about "sockets" they always seem talk about an "internal"
issue, relating to the selection of one from a group of related endpoints
(as relates to a driver module c.f. /dev/starlan becomes /dev/stx00-32).
This is present in STREAMS through the "clone open" where the open of
a master device results in the actual opening of a device segment or
channel.  Is this a "socket" or something like it?

If this is true, then the above refrence to TLI makes no sense to me.
TLI is just a method of genericly establishing "connections," in the
form of virtual circuts, between two "names" which may or may not be
on a generic and or homogenous network.  That is to say, MS-DOS drivers
may be made "TLI conformant" without ever getting UNIX related.

>From what I have gleaned, "sockets" are congruent to STREAMS "clone
opens" but if this is the case, what would you need to change in
streams?

Rob.