What is a popular, multi-platform, free and open source socket library [closed]

Answer 1

There is only one correct answer here. OpenSSL. Because once you have socket code, youre going to want to make SSL connections too. If you are already working in a particular cross platform framework, OpenSSL bindings might already be avaialable. I don't think theres much excuse now to not SSL/TLS enable your application from the get-go.

Answer 2

QT if it isn't too big for you. Boost has some network code as well. wxWidgets has with wxNet a network library as well. Another lib is Clanlib. And of course SDL

Answer 3

Another option you can try is Poco. Poco has a lot more than sockets as well, so if you need other stuff it can provide as well.

Comparing it to other toolkits:

1. Qt has GUI and some very sophisticated features you won't find in Poco, but it's a lot bigger.
2. Boost doesn't have as much as Poco in the way of actual functionality, but it has libraries like reference wrappers, MPL and preprocessor which cannot be found anywhere else.
3. I don't remember ACE very well, but I remember it was very very big in terms of source code and components. ACE seems to be used for very high performance network applications, so it may be overkill. But then again, I'm not too sure.

Just my two cents

Answer 4

Some links for you :
C++ Sockets Library
C++ Socket library - ComPP 1.3
SimpleSockets
libmsocket
Komodia TCP/IP library
STLplus C++ library

Framework
nitro++