Several process listening to the same port number

Question

I hope I am in the right form (it's the third one I am trying).
I have server/client application, one server that handles a lot of clients. In general when ever a client approach the server, the server create new process (fork()) that handle the client request.
I would like to know if there is a problem that several processes (parent and several child processes) are listening to the same port number, is it better to create thread that would handle the client request, instead of creating a child process?
To better understand the problem I create very simple client and server application.
This is a part of the server application:
The server creates a socket, bind to this socket and then listen to this socket.
After that in a while (1) loop he waits for accept:
int sockclient = accept(sockId,(struct sockaddr*)(&client_addr), &addrLen);
When the server get a sockclient (client ask for service) he create new process (fork()) that handle the client request.
struct sockaddr_in addr, client_addr;
bzero(&addr,sizeof(struct sockaddr_in));
addr.sin_family = PF_INET;
addr.sin_port = 8865;
bcopy(ent->h_addr_list[0],&(addr.sin_addr), ent->h_length);
// bind
bind(sockId,(struct sockaddr*)(&addr), sizeof( struct sockaddr_in));
If it would help I can add the all code.
If you knows about articles that talked about this subject It might help too (I am talking about advantages and disadvantages of thread against process but regardless of sockets).

Answer 1

You might look at this article
http://httpd.apache.org/docs-2.1/misc/perf-tuning.html
under the section "accept Serialization - multiple sockets".