Microsoft® Visual J#™ .NET (Core Reference)

Web Network Programming

Sockets are the foundation of many higher-level APIs for building distributed applications that communicate over the Internet (or an intranet). They’re lean and mean—they’re fast because they offer the minimum functionality needed to transport data from one computer to another. In this section, we’ll examine some of the classes that Microsoft has layered on top of sockets for building systems that use upper-layer protocols, such as HTTP for handling Web requests and providing additional features not available to raw sockets. You’ll learn about the approach that the .NET Framework Class Library adopts for defining the HTTP classes and about how the model can be extended to implement other application-defined protocols.