TCPClient vs Socket in C#

c# .net sockets network-programming
Sasha picture Sasha · Mar 26, 2009 · Viewed 26.7k times · Source

I don't see much use of TCPClient, yet there is a lot of Socket? What is the major difference between them and when would you use each?

I understand that .NET Socket is written on top of WINSOCK, and TCPClient is a wrapper over Socket class. Thus TCPClient is way up the chain, and possibly inefficient. Correct me if I am wrong.

Answer

Aaron Clauson picture Aaron Clauson · Mar 26, 2009

The use of TcpClient and TcpListener just means a few less lines of code. As you say it's just a wrapper over the Socket class so there is no performance difference between them it's purely a style choice.

Update: Since this answer was posted the .Net source code has become available. It does indeed show that TcpClient is a very light wrapper over the Socket class which is itself a wrapper on top of the native WinSock2 API*.

  • On Windows. Will be different for .Net Standard/Core etc. on other platforms.

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