The C++ class library is a versatile and user-friendly tool for network programming. It wraps the Berkeley Sockets C API and works on a variety of platforms including Unix and Windows. The library has been widely adopted, both in commercial and open-source applications, and offers several advanced features such as SSL support, IPv6 compatibility, and various socket types (tcp, udp, sctp, http). The source code is freely available under the GNU GPL license or an alternative license.
The library was designed to simplify the complexities of network programming and provide a single-threaded approach to managing multiple sockets. Instead of using the traditional C API, it provides a convenient Socket class that handles address translations and owns the file descriptor. The library also features callback methods such as OnRead(), OnWrite(), OnConnect(), and OnAccept(), to report events and handle logic related to the sockets. The sockets are monitored and managed using the Select() method in a SocketHandler class. The library has been tested on Linux, Windows 2000, and to some extent on Solaris and Mac OS X.