Miscellaneous changes to java.net

# Miscellaneous changes to java.net worth mentioning:

## Noteworthy bug fixes:

- InetAddress
  A bug existed in JDK1.0.2 where one could not create an InetAddress out of a IP address String (e.g., "206.26.48.100") if a corresponding host name (e.g., "java.sun.com") could not be found. This resulted in an UnknownHostException. The bug is fixed in JDK1.1. Additionally, when an InetAddress is created from an IP address, the corresponding hostname is not looked up until specifically requested (via InetAddress.getHostName()), as a performance enhancement.
- ServerSocket/DatagramSocket close()
  A bug existed in JDK1.0.2 where the `close()` method of ServerSocket and DatagramSocket were `synchronized`. The result was that if one thread were blocked indefinitely in DatagramSocket.receive() or ServerSocket.accept(), another thread couldn't break the blocking thread out by calling close(). This is fixed in JDK1.1 by making the close() methods unsynchronized.
- URLConnection
  There was a bug in JDK1.0.2 where the methods on URLConnection:
  - setRequestProperty()
  - getRequestProperty()
  - getHeaderField()
  - getHeaderFieldInt()
  - getContentLength()
  - getDate()
  etc, did not work. These are fixed in JDK1.1.

## Binding to local port/address:

- Socket, ServerSocket, DatagramSocket
  These classes has overloaded constructors for binding to a specific local address and port. This is useful and necessary for applications like proxy servers that operate on multi-homed machines, and need particular control over which network interfaces are used.

## MulticastSocket:

- The MulticastSocket class was moved from package sun.net into the core API of java.net.

## HttpURLConnection:

- JDK1.1 introduces a new class, HttpURLConnection which extends URLConnection, and provides additional functionality specific to HTTP:
- Ability to use all of the request methods with HTTP/1.1, like:
  - GET
  - POST
  - PUT
  - HEAD
  - TRACE
  - DELETE
  - OPTIONS
- Control over whether to follow HTTP redirects.

Last modified: Thu Dec 5 15:09:54 PST