I've done plenty of client/server programming using C/C++ and TCPIP using sockets. I have a situation at work where I need to communicate between two servers separated by a firewall, and getting permission to open a port may be hard. Someone mentioned that one of our systems uses pipes to communicate between two servers thru this firewall. The research that I've done so far seems to indicate that true 'pipes' are only for interprocess communication (IPC) on the same machine, implying that for IPC between machines, I will need to use sockets. Can anyone verify this? Or is there a way to use pipes (or something else) where a given port does not have to be used. Thanks

Might be a phrase situation. Might have to ask on the programming side. My guess is they are talking about a tunnel. While it is as if a pipe it is not a programming pipe or OS pipe. It is a network pipe of sorts. When you get down to layer 1 and 2 your application would be unlikely to interact. Not sure if older protocols even got that close. Might look at old Decnet stuff. I read it wrong and answer it wrong too. So get off my case you peanut.