Not enough depth
If you are going to get an overview of the major aspects of network programming in .NET, and maybe run a few simple examples to reinforce your knowledge, then this book is fine.But if you write networking software for a living, then this book will be of little help.
Mediocre at best
This book basically gives you the watered-down rehashed MSDN version of .NET socket and network programming. This is a 350 page book attempting to cover all aspects of this subject including remoting and the structure of the .NET libraries without getting into much detail in each one.A mere 18 pages is devoted to server side socket programming, but even that is packed with so much fluff that a programmer winds up with too little information to implement an regular TCP socket server, much less an asynchronous one.
Good Introduction
Originally, I bought this book because it contained a brief introduction to .NET Remoting, which I needed a crash course in. I also got it because I have an interest in writing network protocols. I had previously dabbled in some sample .NET code that I had downloaded, but was lacking in a proper foundation for going forward.The book is well structured - gradually introducing the network programming with incrementally more advanced subjects. The style of writing is simple and to the point. There are lots of examples, and complex subjects are explained well.
Chapter 2 introduces streams, with the best explanation of .NET streams that I have seen in my limited reading. Chapter 3 discusses the complex area of asynchronous operations, and threading. Chapter 4 deals with Serialization, and Chapter 5 with URIs.
Later chapters deal with the details of writing networking code, from RAW sockets, through to higher level APIs that let you write powerful code in only one or two lines.
Finally, there are some advanced chapters. Of these, I found the ones on security and scalability the most interesting.
If I had to give some criticism, it would be that the examples (always in both VB and C#) were very short snippets of code, with no broader context of larger examples. I would have found them easier to read if there was some larger example of which they formed part.
There are some better downloadable companion examples, written using Visual Studio .NET 2003. I would have appreciated it if they had gone to the small trouble of adding some project files for a few more IDEs.
(3 reviews)
