For the most part, tools only need to manage data that exists on the host machine of the tool, but there is an increasing demand for tools of a distributed nature for certain processes. Some tools need to access a remote database containing schemas for game entities, while some tools require the ability to download files off a remote file share when appropriate. Some more advanced topics include distributed computing architectures in order to disperse processor-intensive tasks over multiple processing nodes. Another common use for network tools is to pass information between applications that exist on the same machine. Creating a loopback endpoint has been used by a number of tools to pass information between a managed and an unmanaged application process without worrying about data formatting. However, this approach will not be covered in this book since superior techniques are shown in Part V, “Techniques for Legacy Interoperability,” when discussing interoperability with legacy applications.

The chapter in this part does not cover the low-level details of the OSI model or any common network protocols like UDP or TCPIP because of the abstracted nature of the stream model in .NET. It does, however, cover building a distributed grid computing architecture with .NET remoting, and how to download files asynchronously across HTTP.

There is a growing need for network-oriented tools when dealing with distributed architectures, though the majority of tools do not usually require this functionality. Although fairly specific, the chapters covered in this part will come in handy when the need arises.