wcf vs c# network programming

Question

I want to study network programming, there's a chapter named “networking” in “C# in a nutshell”, this chapter contains 'WebClient', 'HttpClient', 'FTP', 'TCP' and so on. But some body tell me to study WCF, I want to know what's the relationship between WCF and c# networking programming, I remembered I have seen somewhere that WCF encapsulates network programming, it's more flexible and convenient, but not efficiency. Does this mean the relationship between them like ado.net technology with orm? Which I should to study, network programming or WCF? Does c# network programming an obsolete technology?

Thanks

Answer 1

"network programming" usually refers to sockets, this is the lowest level of network communication and deals with pushing bytes on the network - all the other communication systems are built on top of sockets.

Most projects don't use sockets directly because there are simple higher level systems you can use but I think it's still worthwhile to learn the basics because it's not so complicated and it will help you deal with problems in those higher level systems.

The next level is WebClient and friends, those are relatively straightforward classes that implement a communication protocol on top of sockets (for example HTTP).

It's definitely worth your time to learn how to use those because they are simple and extremely useful (for example if you want to pull a file from the internet or communicate with a 3rd party service).

At the highest level you have WCF, this is an extensive (and in my personal opinion over-complicated and over-engineered) framework that gives you a class interface for an external network based service while trying (unsuccessfully) to hide all the communication details.

WCF is very popular in big organizations and "enterprise systems", so, if you want to get a job developing enterprise systems for big organizations learning WCF is a very smart career move.

So, my advice, start with sockets, learn just the basics - this will help you understand how things work under the covers (this will become very useful when you have to debug network problems).

Than move on to the higher level classes, write a simple program that uses WebClient to read a page from the internet so you are comfortable with the concept, don't bother with all the advanced options, they are there and you can look them up later when you need them.

Learning just the basics of sockets and WebClient should take just a few hours, after that (if you want to work on big systems) learn how to use WCF.

Then you will have the WCF knowledge for your resume and you will know how to just get something over the internet with a few lines of code without using a gigantic framework when you don't need it.

Answer 2

If you want to study network programming you'll want to read about sockets and TCP/IP (and later on UDP if you want to stream or smaller packets). Sockets are the API that most OS:es uses to handle protocols like TCP/IP.

Your comparison is correct. WCF is a framework on top of the networking layer in .NET. Just as ORMs are frameworks on top of ADO.NET.

Answer 3

WCF is not the so called network programming. They are two concepts with some relationship.

Usually network programming means socket programming and TCP/IP. You are supposed to be familiar with protocols, such as HTTP, FTP, SNMP and so on. Then you can write programs that serve as protocol servers and clients. Network programming is still hot, though it is no longer that popular.

WCF is a framework for web services, which is HTTP only (mainly SOAP).

If possible, you should learn both or at least know of both.