[3] It offers a more secure alternative to the older inetd ("the Internet daemon"), which most modern Linux distributions have deprecated.
xinetd features access control mechanisms such as TCP Wrapper ACLs, extensive logging capabilities, and the ability to make services available based on time.
It can place limits on the number of servers that the system can start, and has deployable defense mechanisms to protect against port scanners, among other things.
On some implementations of Mac OS X, this daemon starts and maintains various Internet-related services, including FTP and telnet.
An example configuration file for the RFC 868 time server: The lines with the "#" character at the beginning are comments without any effect on the service.
In a simple way, the UDP cannot handle huge data transmissions, because it lacks the abilities to rearrange packages in a specified order or guarantee their integrity, but it is faster than TCP.
It is highly recommended to choose a non-root user for security reasons.
In most Linux distributions, the full list of possible options and their description is accessible with a "man xinetd.conf" command.