Product Reviews

.NET does Internet

IP*Works! relieves you from writing grungy code

• By Mike Gunderloy
• 03/06/2002

I reviewed the VB6 edition of this package in the last issue of Developer Central. The new .NET edition has the same features: it's still designed to provide you with implementations of all the major Internet protocols that you're likely to need. This includes old favorites like finger, ping, and whois; more complex protocols including IMAP, SNMP, and LDAP; and even generic TCP/IP and UDP clients and servers. This version even includes a SAX2-compliant XML parser and a SOAP client, so you can build applications that play with new stuff. In all, there are 34 components here, covering the full range of protocols.

Of interest is the way that /n got this edition together: they wrote a Java to C# translation tool and moved over their existing Java codebase. The resulting controls work quite well and integrate smoothly into Visual Studio .NET, right down to (optionally) occupying their own tab in the Toolbox.

Could you do the same work without these controls? Sure; the .NET Framework includes TCPListener, TCPClient, and UDPClient classes that you can hook up to pretty much any Internet protocol. Do you want to do it that way? Not unless you really enjoy writing a bunch of extra code. Personally, I'll be happy to let the /n folks do all that work for me. This is a solid set of controls that hits its intended target well.