.NET Framework Developer's Guide

Network Programming

The Microsoft .NET Framework provides a layered, extensible, and managed implementation of Internet services that can be quickly and easily integrated into your applications. Your applications can build on pluggable protocols to automatically take advantage of new Internet protocols, or they can use a managed implementation of the Windows socket interface to work with the network on the socket level.

In This Section

Introducing Pluggable Protocols: Describes how to access an Internet resource without regard to the access protocol that it requires.

Requesting Data: Explains how to use pluggable protocols to upload and download data from Internet resources.

Programming Pluggable Protocols: Explains how to derive protocol-specific classes to implement pluggable protocols.

Using Application Protocols: Describes programming applications that take advantage of network protocols such as TCP, UDP, and HTTP.

Internet Protocol Version 6: Describes the advantages of Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) over the current version of the Internet Protocol suite (IPv4), describes IPv6 addressing, routing and auto-configuration, and how to enable and disable IPv6.

Configuring Internet Applications: Explains how to use the .NET Framework configuration files to configure Internet applications.

Network Tracing: Explains how to use network tracing to get information about method invocations and network traffic generated by a managed application.

Cache Management for Network Applications: Describes how to use caching for applications that use the WebClient, WebRequest, and HttpWebRequest classes.

Security in Network Programming: Describes how to use standard Internet security and authentication techniques.

Best Practices for System.Net Classes: Provides tips and tricks for getting the most out of your Internet applications.

Accessing the Internet Through a Proxy: Describes how to configure proxies.

Reference

System.Net: Provides a simple programming interface for many of the protocols used on networks today. The WebRequest and WebResponse classes in this namespace are the basis for pluggable protocols.

System.Net.Sockets: Provides a managed implementation of the Windows Sockets (Winsock) interface for developers who need to help control access to the network.

System.Net.Cache: Defines the types and enumerations used to define cache policies for resources obtained using the WebRequest and HttpWebRequest classes.

System.Net.Configuration: Contains classes that applications use to programmatically access and update configuration settings for the System.Net namespaces