Open-source alternatives to Hands On Network Programming With C

smoltcp is a standalone TCP/IP network stack written in Rust, designed specifically for bare-metal and embedded systems. It provides a memory-safe implementation of the internet protocol suite that operates without requiring dynamic heap allocation. The project is distinguished by its heap-less memory management, using fixed-size buffers and manually allocated memory to ensure deterministic performance. It employs zero-copy packet processing and an interface-based hardware abstraction to decouple the network stack from physical hardware. The stack covers a broad range of networking capabilit

libhv is a high-performance C/C++ network library and event-driven I/O framework used to build TCP, UDP, SSL, HTTP, WebSocket, and MQTT clients and servers. It provides a non-blocking event loop for managing network sockets, timers, and system signals across multiple threads. The project is distinguished by its integrated support for specialized network roles, including a full HTTP web server with RESTful routing and middleware, an MQTT messaging client for IoT communication, and the ability to implement SOCKS5 and HTTP proxies. It also features a reliable UDP implementation to ensure ordered

Mongoose is an embedded networking library providing TCP/IP stacks, web server hosting, and IoT device connectivity. It enables microcontrollers and desktop systems to implement network protocols including HTTP, WebSocket, and MQTT. The project provides a bare-metal TCP/IP stack for environments without a native operating system and includes built-in TLS and ECC encryption to secure network traffic. It features a binary-embedded file system to serve web content directly from the executable and supports over-the-air firmware updates for managing device fleets. Additional capabilities cover as

This project is a C++ TCP server framework and educational socket programming guide. It provides a high-performance network library focused on event-driven architecture, implementing a reactor pattern to handle thousands of simultaneous client connections. The framework is distinguished by its multi-threaded event loop, which utilizes a main-sub reactor coordination model to distribute network events across a worker thread pool. It includes an abstraction layer for non-blocking socket I/O and event multiplexing via the epoll system call, decoupling network transport from application business

AndroidAsync is a non-blocking networking library for Android that provides asynchronous sockets, HTTP clients, and servers based on Java NIO. It serves as a toolkit for managing raw TCP socket connections and bidirectional data streams using an asynchronous input and output architecture. The library includes a dedicated WebSocket framework for establishing persistent full-duplex communication channels between Android clients and servers. It also enables the hosting of a lightweight asynchronous HTTP server directly on an Android device to handle incoming network traffic. Its broader capabil

CocoaAsyncSocket is a networking library for macOS and iOS that provides core components for managing asynchronous TCP and UDP streams. It implements non-blocking network communication to maintain application responsiveness during data transfers, featuring a delegate-based system for managing connection streams and packet handling. The library includes a secure communication layer that wraps TCP sockets to apply encryption standards, protecting client and server traffic from unauthorized interception. Its capabilities cover non-blocking connection management for both stream-based TCP and pac

Coost is a concurrent network framework and coroutine scheduler designed for building high-performance TCP, HTTP, and RPC services. It provides a set of tools for handling non-blocking IPv4 and IPv6 communication, integrating SSL encryption and a lightweight execution engine that manages concurrent tasks using shared stacks. The project features a specialized JSON RPC implementation for exchanging structured data over encrypted connections and a high-performance logging system. This logging infrastructure supports topic-based routing, frequency filtering, and automated stack trace capture for

This project is a technical study and analysis guide focused on the internal architecture of Node.js. It provides an in-depth examination of the runtime, focusing on how the engine manages memory handles, executes asynchronous operations, and implements core module logic. The guide specifically analyzes the integration of native C++ classes and functions into JavaScript and documents the behavior of the libuv event loop. It includes detailed references for optimizing performance by identifying V8 compiler bailouts and profiling execution to improve resource efficiency. The material covers a

This project is a high-performance implementation of the QUIC transport protocol, providing a library for establishing multiplexed, low-latency network connections over UDP. It serves as a foundational networking stack for building modern web servers and clients, with native support for HTTP/3 and WebTransport standards. The library distinguishes itself through advanced connection management, including the ability to maintain stable sessions across changing network paths or IP addresses using connection identifiers. It optimizes data throughput by employing packet batching to reduce kernel ov

Twisted is an event-driven networking engine for Python that provides a framework for building asynchronous network applications. At its core, it uses a reactor-based event loop to drive all input and output, dispatching callbacks in a single thread without blocking. The library implements a deferred promise chain for composing asynchronous logic, along with a protocol and factory pattern that separates connection state management from protocol handling, enabling reusable handlers for different network protocols. The framework supports multiple event loops across platforms, including select,

Scapy is a network packet manipulation tool and protocol analysis suite designed for crafting, sending, sniffing, and dissecting network traffic. It functions as a framework for building custom network tools that interact directly with low-level packet headers and payloads, enabling users to perform security research and network diagnostics. The system distinguishes itself through a layer-based construction model that allows users to define protocols as stacked objects, which automatically handle checksums and field offsets. It utilizes dynamic field reflection to map packet structures to bin

This project is a library for establishing bidirectional, real-time communication channels between clients and servers using the WebSocket protocol. It provides a foundational toolkit for managing persistent network connections and processing data frames in accordance with the RFC 6455 standard. The library distinguishes itself through its focus on low-level control and network efficiency. It utilizes an asynchronous, event-driven architecture to manage multiple concurrent connections without requiring dedicated threads for each session. Developers can fine-tune data transmission through manu

Beast is a C++ library for implementing low-level HTTP and WebSocket clients and servers. It functions as an asynchronous networking framework designed to compose non-blocking I/O operations and layered stream stacks for managing concurrent network traffic, specifically utilizing the Boost.Asio asynchronous model. The library provides a comprehensive implementation of the HTTP/1.1 and WebSocket protocols. For HTTP, it includes primitives for parsing and serializing messages with support for chunked transfer encoding, incremental body reading, and request pipelining. Its WebSocket implementati

This project is a learning guide and collection of study notes designed to teach Node.js backend development. It provides a comprehensive core API reference and practical demonstrations for implementing server-side logic, network programming, and system APIs. The guide specifically covers advanced technical domains including process management for scaling applications via clusters and child processes, as well as network programming for building TCP, UDP, and HTTP services. It also includes detailed instructional material on security implementation, focusing on cryptographic hashing and encryp

Netpoll is an event-driven network framework and non-blocking I/O library designed to manage concurrent TCP and Unix domain socket connections. It utilizes a non-blocking event loop to monitor file descriptors and trigger callbacks for read and write events, serving as a high-performance socket manager and TCP network poller. The framework optimizes throughput across CPU cores by distributing incoming network connections across multiple pollers. It implements zero-copy networking primitives, using linked buffers and specialized memory management to read and write data while minimizing memory

Vector is a high-performance observability data pipeline designed to collect, transform, and route logs, metrics, and traces across distributed infrastructure. It functions as a modular engine that decouples data ingestion from processing and transmission, utilizing a component-based architecture to connect diverse sources to multiple destinations. The project distinguishes itself through a focus on reliability and flow control. It implements backpressure-aware data movement to prevent data loss during traffic spikes and utilizes disk-backed event buffering to ensure durability during network

This library provides a framework for building event-driven, non-blocking network applications in PHP. It enables the development of asynchronous TCP and TLS servers and clients that manage multiple concurrent connections without stalling the main execution thread. By utilizing an event-loop architecture, the library handles network operations and data exchange through asynchronous streams, ensuring that the application remains responsive during high-throughput tasks. The project distinguishes itself through its integration with operating system primitives, such as raw file descriptors and Un

POCO is a comprehensive C++ application framework that provides a cross-platform set of libraries for building network-centric applications. It offers a unified abstraction layer that wraps platform-specific APIs, enabling the same code to run across desktop, server, mobile, IoT, and embedded systems. The framework is organized into modular libraries that can be compiled and linked selectively, allowing developers to include only the components their application needs. The framework distinguishes itself through its broad coverage of application infrastructure needs, including threading and sy

Asio is a C++ library for performing network and low-level I/O operations using a consistent asynchronous model that avoids blocking program execution. It provides a portable, cross-platform interface for network socket communication across different operating systems, and manages multiple asynchronous operations without requiring explicit thread management or locking. The library implements a proactor-based asynchronous model where operations post completion handlers to a queue for later execution, and wraps operating system I/O multiplexing mechanisms like epoll, kqueue, IOCP, and select in

Mio is a low-level I/O library for Rust that provides an event-driven framework for monitoring multiple network sockets and file descriptors. It acts as a portable wrapper for operating system native polling systems, including epoll, kqueue, and IOCP, allowing applications to trigger events when resources are ready for reading or writing without blocking the execution thread. The library provides a non-blocking socket interface for managing TCP, UDP, and Unix sockets. It distinguishes itself through a vectored I/O implementation, enabling scatter-gather reads and writes across multiple buffer

Skill-Tree is an educational framework designed to map theoretical technical concepts to practical implementation pipelines and structured interview preparation. It organizes technical knowledge into a tree-based index to enable structured navigation and uses a theory-to-implementation pipeline to verify conceptual understanding through concrete software tasks. The project provides curated study paths and cross-referenced indexing that links common interview questions and simulated exam sets to specific technical modules. It employs module-based subject isolation to separate diverse backend d

Skynet is a distributed game server framework designed for building scalable online game backends. It utilizes distributed actor-based clusters and real-time network communication to manage high-concurrency session coordination across multiple nodes. The framework includes a cluster management orchestrator for coordinating services via cluster-wide messaging and dynamic configuration updates. It features a multi-protocol network gateway supporting TCP, UDP, and WebSockets, alongside a data encoding layer using BSON and Sproto serialization for efficient information transfer between distribute

nanomsg is a distributed messaging middleware and scalable messaging library designed for moving data between machines and processes. It functions as a socket-based communication framework that routes data across different network transport layers. The library implements scalable messaging patterns, specifically request-reply and publish-subscribe, to handle high volumes of data across distributed systems. It provides tools for network performance benchmarking to quantify messaging throughput and latency. The framework supports distributed message routing and inter-process communication usin

embedded-notes is a collection of technical study guides and development notes focused on embedded Linux, Linux kernel internals, and C programming. It serves as a reference for embedded systems development and a preparation resource for technical interviews in the field. The project provides detailed documentation on writing device drivers, managing virtual memory, and understanding kernel internals. It also includes guides on IoT network protocols, such as MQTT and TCP/IP, and outlines the architectural details of chip architectures and hardware peripherals. The material covers a broad sur

rustls is a modern implementation of the Transport Layer Security protocol written in the Rust programming language. It serves as a cryptographic transport layer for establishing encrypted connections between clients and servers to ensure data privacy and integrity. The library features a pluggable crypto provider framework, allowing the substitution of cryptographic primitive implementations to meet specific platform architecture or regulatory compliance requirements. It provides capabilities for secure server configuration to handle encrypted incoming connections and secure client connecti

This project provides a server-side language runtime and a standardized Docker image for deploying applications across different operating systems. It functions as an execution environment for generating dynamic HTML, JSON, and XML content, while also serving as a command line interface for automation scripts and background jobs. The runtime is designed for extensibility through a C-based extension architecture, allowing the loading of custom modules for specialized functionality. It supports multiple server application interfaces, including a FastCGI web interface for high-performance commun

evpp is a C++ network library and framework designed for building high-performance network services using TCP, UDP, and HTTP protocols. It provides an asynchronous event loop to manage nonblocking I/O operations and concurrent network connections across multiple threads. The framework includes specialized tools for asynchronous DNS resolution and a system for asynchronous task scheduling using a managed thread pool. It also features a nonblocking HTTP server and client with integrated connection pooling. The project covers low-level transport layer connectivity for TCP and UDP, as well as hi