An RMIServerSocketFactory instance is used by the RMI runtime in order to obtain server sockets for RMI calls. A remote object can be associated with an RMIServerSocketFactory when it is created/exported via the constructors or exportObject methods of java.rmi.server.UnicastRemoteObject.

An RMIServerSocketFactory instance associated with a remote object is used to obtain the ServerSocket used to accept incoming calls from clients.

An RMIServerSocketFactory instance can also be associated with a remote object registry so that clients can use custom socket communication with a remote object registry.

An implementation of this interface should implement Object#equals to return true when passed an instance that represents the same (functionally equivalent) server socket factory, and false otherwise (and it should also implement Object#hashCode consistently with its Object.equals implementation).