What you'll learn:
- TCP/IP Socket programming basics and advanced level with async/await in C# .Net
- Develop a sound understanding of how networking applications communicate in C# .Net
- Network Programming using .Net Framework networking Namespaces in C#
- C# Networking
Get proficient in computer network socket programming using TCP/IP streaming sockets and become a better professional programmer. This course starts you with TCP/IP network programming using the C# .NET socket library, and gets you writing real code fast.
2026 update — the Section 1 server code, verified on .NET 10. This course was originally recorded in 2014, and the core System.Net.Sockets API you're learning hasn't meaningfully changed since .NET 4.5 — that's exactly why it's still relevant over a decade later. In a new lecture, I open the original Section 1 server project, confirm it still builds in Visual Studio 2026, then use Claude to migrate that project live from .NET Framework 4.5.2 to .NET 10, with no code changes required. I then run it from VS Code with dotnet run and confirm it still accepts connections and echoes data back, exactly as it did in the original recordings. The point isn't that every project in the course has been rebuilt for .NET 10 — it's that the sockets concepts at the heart of this course are proven to still hold up, unchanged, on the current runtime. The updated Section 1 source is available on GitHub, linked directly in the lecture.
Each video in this course covers one essential concept of client-server socket programming and network communication. Ready-to-use C# code examples are supplied as downloadable Visual Studio solutions. After every few lectures, a demo shows the practical implementation of what was just described.
By the end of this course, you'll be able to build C# .NET software that sends and receives data over TCP/IP sockets, peer-to-peer, using async and await. You'll learn not just socket programming, but the same non-blocking I/O pattern used in production .NET networking code today.
Why this still matters in 2026. AI coding assistants can generate socket code that compiles and runs. What they're far less reliable at is explaining why a given pattern is correct, or helping you reason through a race condition in a multi-client server at 11pm. This course builds the actual mental model — sockets, ports, endpoints, blocking vs. non-blocking I/O — the part of the skill that doesn't get automated away and still shows up in networking interview questions.
Minimum upfront theory. Many courses pile up theory before the real code. This one doesn't — you'll be writing C# socket code within the first 15 minutes.
Who this course is for: developers and CS/university students with some C#, Java, or C++ experience who've never worked at the socket level. If you can write code but have never had to reason about ports, streams, and async network I/O, this closes that gap directly — with a project-based, WinForms-first approach instead of bare console demos.
Over 11,000 students have taken this course, many while working through university distributed-systems assignments or preparing for networking interview questions.
