Network Programming in .NET with C# and Visual Basic.NET review

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Verdict:

Review Date: 15 Nov 2004

Price when reviewed:

Reviewed By: Mike James

Our Rating 4 stars out of 5

Review
Specs

ISBN 1555583156

Pages 514

Network programming is supposed to be easier in the .NET languages, as they have a wide range of classes designed to deliver network facilities. Even so, you will need to dig deeper if you want to do anything beyond the basics. In this book, Fiach Reid delves into this wider world of network programming.

The book kicks off slowly with some basic material. When it finally gets going, it presents the reader with code examples and descriptions of TCP, UDP, HTTP, SMTP, Remoting and web services. As well as this mainstream fare, it covers telephony, MSMQ, IPv6 and lower-level packet protocols. You may not be interested in these more esoteric protocols, but they do provide opportunities to be inventive and are poorly covered by the standard documentation.

The examples are useful but not complete in themselves. If you want serious working examples, try another book. One irritation is that listings are given in both C# and VB .NET and this is largely a waste of space. The differences between the two languages are so slight that any programmer advanced enough to understand the networking ideas won't be put off by the use of just one or the other. As most of the code involves the use of the common class libraries, the difference is minimal. Nonetheless, this is certainly a useful book.

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