The new Windows Sockets 2 extends functionality in a number of areas.
Windows Sockets 2 Features
| Access to protocols other than TCP/IP | Windows Sockets 2 allows an application to use the familiar socket interface to achieve simultaneous access to a number of installed transport protocols. |
| Overlapped I/O with scatter/gather | Windows Sockets 2 incorporates the overlapped paradigm for socket I/O and incorporates scatter/gather capabilities as well, following the model established in Win32 environments. |
| Protocol-independent name resolution facilities: | Windows Sockets 2 includes a standardized set of functions for querying and working with the myriad of name resolution domains that exist today (for example DNS, SAP, and X.500). |
| Protocol-independent multicast and multipoint: | Windows Sockets 2 applications discover what type of multipoint or multicast capabilities a transport provides and use these facilities in a generic manner. |
| Quality of service | Window Sockets 2 establishes conventions applications use to negotiate required service levels for parameters such as bandwidth and latency. Other QOS-related enhancements mechanisms for network-specific QOS extensions. |
| Other frequently requested extensions | Windows Sockets 2 incorporates shared sockets and conditional acceptance; exchange of user data at connection setup/teardown time; and protocol-specific extension mechanisms. |