Hello, I am currently trying to use the iostreams lib with standard BSD socket() file descriptors. If I understand correctly, I need a "bidirectional" stream buffer, so I tried overriding the mode like this: stream_buffer<file_descriptor, std::char_traits<file_descriptor::char_type>, std::allocator<file_descriptor::char_type>, boost::iostreams::bidirectional> But I cannot instantiate this because a static assertion fails. I assume this happens because the file_descriptor class is defined to be seekable (which a TCP socket is not), so what is the best way to do this? Thanks for your help ... Johannes Ballé Philips Applied Technologies Building SFJ 4.50 Glaslaan 2 5616 LW Eindhoven Tel: +31 40 2734194 E-mail: johannes.balle@philips.com