Microsoft® Visual Basic® .NET Programmer's Cookbook

Communicate Using TCP

Problem

You need to send data between two computers on a network using a TCP/IP connection.

Solution

Use the TcpClient and TcpListener classes.

Discussion

TCP is a reliable, connection-based protocol that allows two computers to communicate over a network. It provides built-in flow-control, sequencing, and error handling, which makes it very reliable and easy to program with.

To create a TCP connection, one computer must act as the server and start listening on a specific endpoint. (An endpoint is defined as an IP address, which identifies the computer and port number.) The other computer must act as a client and send a connection request to the endpoint where the first computer is listening. Once the connection is established, ...