The following code fragment is typical for initiating a socket connection. This example creates a new Socket connection to port port at the remote computer host:

Socket socket = new Socket( host, port );

Similarly, the following code demonstrates how we listen for incoming connections. This example creates a ServerSocket listening on port port, and then enters an infinite loop, accepting and processing incoming connections:

ServerSocket serverSocket = new ServerSocket( port );
while (true) {
    Socket socket = serverSocket.accept();
    doSomethingWithNewConnection( socket );
}

Secure sockets work in a very similar manner, but before we can implement them for our example we must complete several steps. We'll go over these steps in the panels that follow.