The March 2007 Community Technology Preview (CTP) release of the .NET Framework V3.5 codenamed "Orcas" is now available for download.  To obtain the bits and learn more about the Orcas release, please see the download site

Among the new features in the runtime and IDE, the .NET Framework networking team has been busy adding new functionality.  The core networking enhancements are:

International Resource Identifier support for URIs – Finally URIs with international characters in the hostname or path are easily created and parsed with managed code.  No more ASCII-only URLs.

    Socket Performance Improvements – In a joint effort between the System.Net and CLR team, socket throughput has increased by up to 70%

    Easily create Peer to Peer applications in managed code with the new System.Net.PeerToPeer namespace:

    • Peer Name Resolution Protocol: Managed code APIs for serverless name resolution (kinda like DNS without the servers :) )
    • People Near Me: Discover and interact with peers around you
    • Find information about your peer contacts whereever they are
    • Start application collaboration sessions between peers with a few lines of code
    • Publish information which all peer enabled applications can discover and consume

The System.Net.PeerToPeer namespace is built on the Windows Vista P2P platform.  For an overview of the plaform, check out this channel 9 video

After giving the features a try, if you have any feedback, please send us a note by emailing nclasks at microsoft.com

 

Happy Coding!

-Mike