I have the following requirements. One TCP socket - R&W ("event driven": R & W request arrivals not predictable) - threadsafe. If it's of any help, readS update the local state machine in response to events external to a "server". Events external to the local device are reported back to the server via writeS. Communication in both directions is in the form of discrete "messages". OS is, let's say, Linux. An IOStream wrapper would be nice. On the other hand, I must have fairly low level control over the socket (specify interface(s) used, set various SO_*, etc.) It just doesn't seem that I should be required to roll my own to provide what appears to me to be a fairly basic set of requirements. On the other hand, I haven't seen anything on Boost that provides the features I'm looking for. It looks like the closest would be the new iostreams library *after* Jonathan Turkanis adds socket support to Boost version 1.34. Is that pretty much it? Anyone got any other ideas that might work now? Suggestions sincerely appreciated, Dick Bridges "For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." H.L. Mencken