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The STREAMS subsystem is an I/O facility that provides a full-duplex connection between a user process and a device driver and is used to implement most current networking protocol stacks such as TCP/IP. All networking drivers that use the SCO protocol stacks must use the STREAMS interface; if you do not use STREAMS, you must provide your own protocol stacks.
A stream is a structure made up of linked modules, each of which processes the transmitted information and passes it to the next module. One of these queues of modules connects the user process to the device, and the other provides a data path from the device to the process.
The layered structure allows protocols to be stacked and also increases the flexibility of the interface, making it more likely that modules can be used by more than one driver. All character-based TTY devices also use the STREAMS interface for SCO SVR5 2.0 and SVR5 systems.
For information about STREAMS drivers, refer to Developing STREAMS modules and drivers and the Section D2str manual pages, Section D3str manual pages, and Section D4str manual pages manual pages.