As DEVELOPERS, WE FIND ourselves challenged by the ubiquity of the Internet on a daily basis as we often need or want to provide some level of network service within our applications. Whether our goal is to allow remote monitoring of an application's health, enable multiple users to access a centralized service, or even authenticate a user's identity prior to giving him access to an application, network programming is a seemingly dark art practiced by only the most experi- enced developers. We have written this text to help you meet the challenge, and to show you that network programming can...