Out of band data overview

This is a bit more information regarding what out of band data really is.

Source: UNIX Network Programming by W. Richard Stevens.

From Chapter 4:

Similarly, when a user at a terminal presses the attention key, it needs to be operated on as soon as possible. The Unix interrupt key (typically the Delete key or Control-C) is one example of this, as are the terminal flow control characters (typically Control-S and Control-Q). This type of information is termed out-of-band data or expedited data. With out-of-band data we want the byte-stream service layer on the sending side to send this data before any other data that it has buffered. Similarly we want the receiving end to pass this data to its user process ahead of any data that it might have buffered. Some method is also desired for the receiving byte-stream service layer to notify the user process asynchronously that out-of-band data has arrived. As you might guess, a Unix signal can be user for this notification. The term out of band is used because it appears to the user processes that a separate communication channel is being used for this data, in addition to the normal data channel (band). This is shown in Figure 4.18.

Figure 4.18   In-band data and out-of-band data.

From Chapter 6:

To send an out-of-band message, the MSG_OOB flag must be specified for the send, sendto, or sendmsg system calls. [...]

TCP Out-of-Band Data

All this gets more complicated with TCP becuase it can send the notification that out-of-band data exists (termed "urgent data" by TCP) before it sends the out-of-band data. In this case, if the process executes one of the three receive system calls, an error of EWOULDBLOCK is returned if the out-of-band data has not arrived. As with the SPP example above [which I have not included on this page], an error of EINVAL is returned by these three system calls if the MSG_OOB flag is specified when there isn't any out-of-band data.

Still another option is provided with the TCP implementation, to allow for multiple bytes of out-of-band data. By default, only a single byte of out-of-band data is provided, and unlike SPP, this byte of data is not stored in the normal data stream. This data byte can only be read by specifying the MSG_OOB flag to the receive system calls. But if we set the SO_OOBINLINE option for the socket, using the setsockopt system call described in Section 6.11, the out-of-band data is left in the normal data stream and is read without specifying the MSG_OOB flag. If this socket option is enabled, we must use the SIOCATMARK ioctl to determine where in the data stream the out-of-band data occurs. In this case, if multiple occurrences of out-of-band data are received, all the data is left in-line (i.e, none of the data can be lost) but the mark returned by the SIOCATMARK ioctl corresponds to the final sequence of out-of-band data that was received. If the out-of-band data is not received in-line, it is possible to lose some intermediate out-of-band data when the out-of-band data arrives faster that it is processed by the user.