Microsoft is gearing up to introduce new networking features into its next beta development milestone of .NET Framework 4.0. The Redmond company confirmed that Network Class Library were scheduled to go live with Beta 2 of .NET 4.0. At this point in time, developers are free to use the first Beta release of .NET Framework 4.0. However, if they are going to take advantage of the additional features promised by the software giant they will have to wait for the second Beta release. No word yet from Microsoft on a definitive delivery deadline for the .NET Framework 4.0 Beta 2.

“A partial summary of the features is: Opening socket connections using the DNS name of the machine; Opening socket connections for IPv4 and IPv6 simultaneously; Using SSL for authentication only; Setting 64-bit values for the HTTP Range header; Setting the Date and Host headers on HttpWebRequest; New performance counters for HttpWebRequest; and Supporting escaped characters embedded in URIs,” revealed Nicholas Allen, program manager at Microsoft working on Windows Communication Foundation, Windows Workflow Foundation, Silverlight, and other projects for the .NET Framework.

Microsoft's Aaron Oneal has a more complete and detailed list of the new features that will be introduced with .NET Framework 4.0 Beta 2. Oneal indicated that, on top of the new additions in Beta 2, the software giant had already had to deal with a vast number of bugs. No less than 150 bugs were fixed in the Beta 1 development milestone. Oneal explained that the focus was on: “stability (fix hangs, crashes and improve long-running/data center scenarios such as fix memory leaks); performance; RFC compliance with URI, FTP, HTTP, SMTP; internationalization (better handling of Unicode characters, etc.) in URI, FTP, HTTP, SMTP; IPv6 connectivity; customer reported bugs through our Connect, MSDN Forums, and other channels.”

Allen warned users of WCF not to expect the new networking features to automatically pop up in the Windows Communication Foundation. “Some features aren’t applicable, either because we don’t use the protocol or because an existing WCF feature already solves the problem, but for the most part we’ll be waiting for you to tell us if there’s something important to support to improve your applications. You don’t have to (and shouldn’t) wait for beta 2 to actually be available to start asking,” Allen stated.

Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1 is available for download here.
.NET Framework 4.0 Beta 1 is available for download here.