Is there a way for multiple processes to share a listening socket?
In socket programming, you create a listening socket and then for each client that connects, you get a normal stream socket that you can use to handle the client's request. The OS manages the queue of incoming connections behind the scenes.

Two processes cannot bind to the same port at the same time - by default, anyway.

I'm wondering if there's a way (on any well-known OS, especially Windows) to launch multiple instances of a process, such that they all bind to the socket, and so they effectively share the queue. Each process instance could then be single threaded; it would just block when accepting a new connection. When a client connected, one of the idle process instances would accept that client.

This would allow each process to have a very simple, single-threaded implementation, sharing nothing unless through explicit shared memory, and the user would be able to adjust the processing bandwidth by starting more instances.

Does such a feature exist?
Is there a way for multiple processes to share a listening socket?
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In socket programming, you create a listening socket and then for each client that connects, you get a normal stream socket that you can use to handle the client's request. The OS manages the queue of incoming connections behind the scenes.

Two processes cannot bind to the same port at the same time - by default, anyway.

I'm wondering if there's a way (on any well-known OS, especially Windows) to launch multiple instances of a process, such that they all bind to the socket, and so they effectively share the queue. Each process instance could then be single threaded; it would just block when accepting a new connection. When a client connected, one of the idle process instances would accept that client.

This would allow each process to have a very simple, single-threaded implementation, sharing nothing unless through explicit shared memory, and the user would be able to adjust the processing bandwidth by starting more instances.

Does such a feature exist?