Beginner question - TCP or Sockets ?

[FrenchFry]

I'm new to Nginx and the technology in general.   I have spent some time on
nginx.org.  The one thing I'm not sure of is if I need to configure my web
server, which is Thin (ruby), with sockets or should TCP be enough.  The
reason I ask is because a number of tutorial and blog posts seem to say that
the two servers can communicate via tcp but at the same time most setups
seem to be done with sockets.

I'm looking for Nginx to serve static files, specifically media files, but
not anything that resides in my site's public folder.  Anyway, to repeat, do
I need sockets set up or should tcp be enough. So far tcp has not worked for
me.  Thanks for any advice , direction.

Posted at Nginx Forum: https://forum.nginx.org/read.php?2,277173,277173#msg-277173