0.1 - The Original Introduction

"This FAQ has been put together by Mark Towfiq, with much-appreciated assistance from Jay Allard, Bruce Backman, Paul Brooks, Martin Hall, Simon Hewison, Mike Morse, Bob Quinn, Ed Schwalenberg, Bill Tang, Dave Treadwell, and Fred Whiteside."

0.2 - A Bit About the Maintainer

My name is Warren Young, and I maintain (loosely speaking) this FAQ. I've been writing programs that use Winsock for about five years and have been writing non-Winsock TCP/IP programs for even longer.

0.3 - Legal Stuff

These pages are copyrighted. You may read these pages on-line, and you may also copy these pages to your local hard disk and read them off-line. All other rightsespecially but not limited to public display and distributionare reserved by the author. I do grant one exception to the public display limitation: authorized mirrors may display this site in complete, unmodified form.

THERE IS NO WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, FOR THE INFORMATION ON THIS SITE, INCLUDING WARRANTIES OF ACCURACY, SUITABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. USING THIS INFORMATION IMPLIES YOUR ACCEPTANCE OF THESE TERMS.

0.4 - Mirrors

There are currently no official mirrors of this site. If you want the latest, official FAQ, point your browser to:

http://www.cyberport.com/~tangent/programming/winsock/

0.5 - What if your question is not in the FAQ?

Usually when someone emails me a question about Winsock, it's because they think they'll get a quick answer. After all, I'm the Winsock expert, right? [Tongue firmly planted in cheek.] This ignores one small fact: if it was easy for me to answer, the answer would probably be in the FAQ already!

I also have a more serious problem with answering questions by email: only one person benefits if I email you an answer. This leads to me answering the same questions again and again, which is totally against the idea of a FAQ.

A better place to ask Winsock questions is in a Usenet newsgroup or in a mailing list, because many people see your question, many more see and benefit from the answer, and the answers are archived for future questioners to find. See this FAQ item for pointers to several such resources.

If you can't find your answer via the above resources, go ahead and email me your question. However, I may not be much help since I monitor many of those mailing lists and newsgroups; if I didn't answer your question on the newsgroup or mailing list, there's little chance emailing me directly will make a difference.

0.6 - Is there a mailing list for FAQ updates?

No, not at this time. However, I do post the latest bits of the FAQ's What's New section to the newsgroup alt.winsock.programming every month. This newsgroup is very low-volume (10-20 messages a day), so monitoring the newsgroup is an easy way to stay up to date on what's going on with the FAQ.

0.7 - Language Bias

This FAQ is biased towards C++. More properly, most of the code in the FAQ is C code that uses a sprinkling of C++ features. I don't stick to pure C for personal style reasons, and because every Windows C compiler can also compile C++ code. There are now a few examples that use fully object-oriented C++ code, either to illustrate various Winsock class libraries or because they are GUI programs, which I prefer to do in MFC.

There are a number of other reasons I don't use some other language:

1. I only wanted to use one language in the FAQ. Since C is the lingua franca of Windows programming, I feel safe in assuming that you can at least read C well enough to translate C code into your own chosen language.
2. The Winsock API itself is biased towards C concepts, because it derives from the C-centric Unix world's Berkeley sockets API.
3. Many other popular languages, such as Delphi and Java, have their own way of talking to Winsock that has little to do with the actual API, from a programmer's standpoint. The preferred way to program Winsock in Delphi, for example, is to use the included Winsock control, not the underlying API.

Problems that only affect, say, Visual Basic, are not covered in the FAQ. The FAQ's Resources section and the FAQ item Can I use Winsock with { My Favorite Language }? may be of some use.

0.8 - Protocol Bias

This FAQ only covers the TCP/IP transport protocol suite at this time, simply because I've never programmed for any other transport. Winsock supports many other transports, but I can't even help you to find info about them, other than the obvious resources: newsgroups, the Winsock spec and its transport-specific addenda, and MSDN.

0.9 - Acknowledgements

A FAQ is never an isolated thing. It takes many people, from patient gurus willing to share their knowledge, down to the masses of ignorant newbies posting the same damn questions yet again. Without gurus, there can be no accuracy. Without newbies, there's no grist for the mill. And without everyone from newbies on up, there's no point in having a FAQ.

My first contribution, as mentioned above, is Mark Towfiq's original FAQ. Although not much remains of the original material, it did provide this FAQ's core. In fact, I might not have decided to create a FAQ in the first placeit probably took an existing, langushing FAQ to prod me.

Bob Quinn (of Windows Sockets Network Programming fame) keeps me accurate and has provided inspiration for a number of the FAQ's current questions.

Philippe Jounin has provided invaluable input by way of a different perspective. That added perspective has corrected several bits of tunnel vision in this FAQ.

Alun Jones has repeatedly pointed out my various failings. (I'm grateful for this, really I am.) In one way or another, those corrections improve the quality of the information in this FAQ.

As of Spring of 2000, the FAQ began including articles, code and FAQ items from various Winsockers around the globe. I thank these people for letting me kipe their good works. (These items are marked with the original author's name.)

And of course, there are dozens of others who have sent me email with snippets, corrections, suggestions, pointers and atta-boys. Thanks to you all.