actually i have been to the tangentsoft.net site and downloaded what was supposed to be a working vc++ project. i have looked at it and found it more useful to study than use because it simply does not compile. however, if it compiled i could examine its behavior and learn a hell of a lot more by observing it in the debugger.

my read of the CAsyncSocket (and i could very well be wrong) is that it is the de facto standard because it is asnchronous/blocking. are you telling me some underlying classes are better and compitable with windows/xp/vista or whatever they are calling what they are doing today?