2.1 Windows Sockets Stack Installation Checking

To detect the presence of one (or many) Windows Sockets implementations on a system, an application which has been linked with the Windows Sockets Import Library may simply call the WSAStartup() routine. If an application wishes to be a little more sophisticated it can examine the $PATH environment variable and search for instances of Windows Sockets implementations (WINSOCK.DLL). For each instance it can issue a LoadLibrary() call and use the WSAStartup() routine to discover implementation specific data.

This version of the Windows Sockets specification does not attempt to address explicitly the issue of multiple concurrent Windows Sockets implementations. Nothing in the specification should be interpreted as restricting multiple Windows Sockets DLLs from being present and used concurrently by one or more Windows Sockets applications.

For further details of where to obtain Windows Sockets components, see Appendix B.2.