The System.Net.Sockets namespace provides a mechanism for real-time duplex communication with remote network resources and enables higher-level APIs to communicate over a bi-directional transport. This also allows an application to interoperate as a client with existing TCP services. For more information, see Working with Sockets.

The System.Net.Sockets namespace in Silverlight 4 has added support for UDP multicast clients. For more information, see Working with Multicast.

For additional socket methods for Windows Phone, see SocketExtensions.

 Classes

	Class	Description
	Socket	Implements the Berkeley sockets interface.
	SocketAsyncEventArgs	Represents an asynchronous socket operation.
	SocketException	The exception that is thrown when a socket error occurs.
	UdpAnySourceMulticastClient	A client receiver for multicast traffic from any source, also known as Any Source Multicast (ASM) or Internet Standard Multicast (ISM).
	UdpSingleSourceMulticastClient	A client receiver for multicast traffic from a single source, also known as Source Specific Multicast (SSM).

 Enumerations

	Enumeration	Description
	AddressFamily	Specifies the addressing scheme that an instance of the Socket class can use.
	ProtocolType	Specifies the protocol that the Socket class supports.
	SocketAsyncOperation	The type of asynchronous socket operation most recently performed with this object.
	SocketClientAccessPolicyProtocol	Specifies the method to download the policy file that an instance of the Socket class will use.
	SocketError	Defines error codes for the Socket class.
	SocketShutdown	Defines constants that are used by the Socket..::.Shutdown method.
	SocketType	Specifies the type of socket that an instance of the Socket class represents.

 See Also

Reference

Other Resources

HTTP Communication and Security with Silverlight

Networking and Web Services

URL Access Restrictions in Silverlight

Working with Multicast

Working with Sockets

SocketExtensions