NetworkComms.Net is the easiest and most intuitive alternative to WCF (Windows Communication Framework). Click here for a full list of features. A lot of people ask us why they should choose NetworkComms.Net over WCF and the simplest answer is that it’s not a fair comparison, although NetworkComms.Net is still the better choice.

“Using NetworkComms.Net meant I had more time to focus on my core application goals rather than debugging networking problems.”

A more valid question would be to ask ‘how should I choose between Sockets or WCF’? To save you time searching we have highlighted the primary advantages and disadvantages as follows:

	Advantages	Disadvantages
Sockets	Highest performance Most versatile	Longer to implement than WCF *
WCF	Support for existing communication protocols, e.g. SOAP, WS, MSMQ Existing integration path with web services	Implements sockets behind the scenes Performance worse than sockets Very steep learning curve

* – The star is important here because you can use NetworkComms.Net to be up and running within minutes.

“NetworkComms.Net provides the performance of sockets, more versatility than WCF, and only takes minutes to implement.”

Clearly if you are after the most high performance and versatile implementation you would probably choose Sockets. This is the same choice that we made when developing our network library. Using NetworkComms.Net you get the performance and versatility of sockets but without the extensive amount of development required to implement a feature rich solution. We’ve done the hard work for you by providing a network library that can add high performance network functionality to your application, whether desktop or mobile, within minutes.