Welcome to the Network Class Library (NCL) Team Blog

Delivering your managed networking experience.

There is a chance that you have never heard about the NCL team and yet you’re using our components every day (most likely, right now while you’re reading this). How could this be?

When you opened this page to read our blog, here is what happened under the covers:  The browser sent an HTTP web request and the server answered by sending back an HTTP web response; when those calls are executed using managed code, then you’re using our components. In fact, every time you download a file, access secure resources (via SSL), or access any other network resources using managed code (any .NET language), you’re using our features. If you’re working with ASP.NET and web services in IIS, without realizing it, you’re using our features in almost every call that you make.  In addition, if you’re writing or using Silverlight rich internet applications, you’re benefiting from our features (check out http://www.silverlight.net/ to see how cool Silverlight is).

Who are we and what do we do?

We are developers, testers, program managers, and document writers who work together to give you an unmatched managed networking experience. We own the System.Net namespace(s), the System.Uri class, and core networking components for Silverlight and Windows Live Mesh.

Why our technology?

Because our technology is simpler, more secure, and more powerful.  We have dozens of classes that make it easy to perform a variety of tasks, including sending email, serving up a web page, retrieving a web page, creating a secure connection, and even gathering information about the networking capabilities of the computer your code is running on.

Sending data over a network can be as simple as instantiating a TcpClient and connecting to a URI.  You can have your networking code up and running in minutes.  Need more control over your network stream than that?  Our layered approach allows flexibility; open a socket directly so that you can implement your protocols the way you need them.  The only limit is your own creativity.

Furthermore, because you’re in a managed environment, you have all the power of that environment at your disposal.  Your code will work on both 32 and 64 bit platforms, we handle interoperability with COM and native libraries, and we even manage the memory for you.  With our technology, you can spend less time figuring out how to deliver solutions and more time actually delivering them.

You can find more detailed technical information in our MSDN library documentation and community forum, and you can contact us using the e-mail link above. For feature requests and bug submissions, please use the Microsoft Connect website.

Welcome to our blog and have fun reading our posts!

- NCL Team