A selector provider is a concrete subclass of this class that has a zero-argument constructor and implements the abstract methods specified below. A given invocation of the Java virtual machine maintains a single system-wide default provider instance, which is returned by the provider method. The first invocation of that method will locate the default provider as specified below.

The system-wide default provider is used by the static open methods of the DatagramChannel , Pipe , Selector , ServerSocketChannel , and SocketChannel classes. It is also used by the System.inheritedChannel() method. A program may make use of a provider other than the default provider by instantiating that provider and then directly invoking the open methods defined in this class.

All of the methods in this class are safe for use by multiple concurrent threads.