Customer Reviews
Poorly written! Incomplete! Some good useful examples! Unfortunately nothing better up there! - By: Mile, 31 Oct 2007 
A poorly written book!
It appears as if the author chose his chapter headings & section titles well to make it look at first glance like anin depth material covering a broad range of subjects. However, if you read the book you will notice that each section starts with a poor superficial introduction of the subject matter with absolutely noin depth material, followed by a very good example. I must say that most of his examples work, but you will have to scratch your head to know why. He doesn't even comment on his own code other thanin a superficial way.
I tried to search for a good book on the subject & couldn't after a year of using this one. Being this the only valid source up there, you probably won't have a choice but to get it. It'll get you started, but you will end up having to purchase another book to complete your knowledge.
As reviewed in VSJ magazine (september 2004) - By: , 09 Sep 2004 
This is a clearly written & interesting account of network programming using both VB.NET & C#. The use of both languages saves the publisher cost & risk of two editions of the same book but puts the reader to the cost of buying redundant pages. Given that C# & VB.NET are so close anyway, & most of the work is done by the common class library, it hardly seems worth the space given to listingsin both languages. It's about time Microsoft decided which of its redundant languages was the one to go for ( as if we didn't know already ).
Returning to the bookin hand. It is occasionally too low level - if you need to be told how to use Visual Studio then you probably aren't up to learning about network programming. Slowly this tendency to deal with the simple dies away, & we are left with some interesting descriptions of TCP, UDP, HTTP, SMTP, Remoting & web services. It also covers less common protocols such as telephony, MSMQ, IPv6 & low-level packet protocols. The examples are all describedin short sections interleaved with text. The discussions are relaxed & informal & the author isn't afraid of upsetting people by pointing out the defects & restrictions of the technologies. This makes the book highly recommended, especially if you're interestedin implementing any networking features using the ,NET framework
excellent intro to networking tasks - By: , 27 Aug 2004 I really like this book, as it provides simple examples of how to do networking tasks without huge technical explanations, very useful for developers such as myselfin the real world who don't have time for ploughing through extended theory sessions before getting to the end result.
Another reviewer has mentioned the lack of complete source code as a reason for giving this book one star. I say, you were supposed to be giving a book review, not a customer service survey. Anyway I spent about half an hour typingin the TCP/IP server code from the book & it all worked fine (and actually, typing it in, you learn more anyway).
Save your time and money - By: Anthony Bermudez, 11 Aug 2004 
Even though there is some good informationin this book, there is no complete source code provided. The author gives examplesin both C# & VB.Net but will not provide a link to download the source code. After contacting the author, he replied that if he provided source code no one would buy the book!!??. Unless you want to typein a couple hundred pages of incomplete code, save your time & money on this one.
