If you didn’t hear before about pinetd, let me tell you more about it.
Initially, when PHP3 was out, I wrote a mail server using php. It was initially using xinetd to be run, then PHP/NC was born. PHP/NC (NC = Non-Connu) was a normal build of php 3, including a few more functions about sockets manipulation. It wasn’t really safe, but allowed more control over sockets in php.
Then, PHP4 was released, and a socket extensions was there too…
