How to write a scalable Tcp/Ip based server

Question

I am in the design phase of writing a new Windows Service application that accepts TCP/IP connections for long running connections (i.e. this is not like HTTP where there are many short connections, but rather a client connects and stays connected for hours or days or even weeks).

I'm looking for ideas for the best way to design the network architecture. I'm going to need to start at least one thread for the service. I am considering using the Asynch API (BeginRecieve, etc..) since I don't know how many clients I will have connected at any given time (possibly hundreds). I definitely do not want to start a thread for each connection.

Data will primarily flow out to the clients from my server, but there will be some commands sent from the clients on occasion. This is primarily a monitoring applicaiton in which my server sends status data periodically to the clients.

Any suggestions on the best way to make this as scalable as possible? Basic workflow? Thanks.

EDIT: To be clear, i'm looking for .net based solutions (C# if possible, but any .net language will work)

BOUNTY NOTE: To be awarded the bounty, I expect more than a simple answer. I would need a working example of a solution, either as a pointer to something I could download or a short example in-line. And it must be .net and Windows based (any .net language is acceptable)

EDIT: I want to thank everyone that gave good answers. Unfortunately, I could only accept one, and I chose to accept the more well known Begin/End method. Esac's solution may well be better, but it's still new enough that I don't know for sure how it will work out.

I have upvoted all the answers I thought were good, I wish I could do more for you guys. Thanks again.

Answer 1

There are many ways of doing network operations in C#. All of them use different mechanisms under the hood, and thus suffer major performance issues with a high concurrency. Begin* operations are one of these that many people often mistake for being the faster/fastest way of doing networking.

To solve these issues, they introduced the *Async set of methods: From MSDN http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.net.sockets.socketasynceventargs.aspx

The SocketAsyncEventArgs class is part of a set of enhancements to the System.Net.Sockets..::.Socket class that provide an alternative asynchronous pattern that can be used by specialized high-performance socket applications. This class was specifically designed for network server applications that require high performance. An application can use the enhanced asynchronous pattern exclusively or only in targeted hot areas (for example, when receiving large amounts of data).

The main feature of these enhancements is the avoidance of the repeated allocation and synchronization of objects during high-volume asynchronous socket I/O. The Begin/End design pattern currently implemented by the System.Net.Sockets..::.Socket class requires a System..::.IAsyncResult object be allocated for each asynchronous socket operation.

Under the covers, the *Async API uses IO completion ports which is the fastest way of performing networking operations, see http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc302334.aspx

And just to help you out, I am including the source code for a telnet server I wrote using the *Async API. I am only including the relevant portions. Also to note, instead of processing the data inline, I instead opt to push it onto a lock free (wait free) queue that is processed on a separate thread. Note that I am not including the corresponding Pool class which is just a simple pool which will create a new object if it is empty, and the Buffer class which is just a self-expanding buffer which is not really needed unless you are receiving an indeterministic amount of data. If you would like anymore information, feel free to send me a PM.

 public class Telnet
{
    private readonly Pool<SocketAsyncEventArgs> m_EventArgsPool;
    private Socket m_ListenSocket;

    /// <summary>
    /// This event fires when a connection has been established.
    /// </summary>
    public event EventHandler<SocketAsyncEventArgs> Connected;

    /// <summary>
    /// This event fires when a connection has been shutdown.
    /// </summary>
    public event EventHandler<SocketAsyncEventArgs> Disconnected;

    /// <summary>
    /// This event fires when data is received on the socket.
    /// </summary>
    public event EventHandler<SocketAsyncEventArgs> DataReceived;

    /// <summary>
    /// This event fires when data is finished sending on the socket.
    /// </summary>
    public event EventHandler<SocketAsyncEventArgs> DataSent;

    /// <summary>
    /// This event fires when a line has been received.
    /// </summary>
    public event EventHandler<LineReceivedEventArgs> LineReceived;

    /// <summary>
    /// Specifies the port to listen on.
    /// </summary>
    [DefaultValue(23)]
    public int ListenPort { get; set; }

    /// <summary>
    /// Constructor for Telnet class.
    /// </summary>
    public Telnet()
    {           
        m_EventArgsPool = new Pool<SocketAsyncEventArgs>();
        ListenPort = 23;
    }

    /// <summary>
    /// Starts the telnet server listening and accepting data.
    /// </summary>
    public void Start()
    {
        IPEndPoint endpoint = new IPEndPoint(0, ListenPort);
        m_ListenSocket = new Socket(endpoint.AddressFamily, SocketType.Stream, ProtocolType.Tcp);

        m_ListenSocket.Bind(endpoint);
        m_ListenSocket.Listen(100);

        //
        // Post Accept
        //
        StartAccept(null);
    }

    /// <summary>
    /// Not Yet Implemented. Should shutdown all connections gracefully.
    /// </summary>
    public void Stop()
    {
        //throw (new NotImplementedException());
    }

    //
    // ACCEPT
    //

    /// <summary>
    /// Posts a requests for Accepting a connection. If it is being called from the completion of
    /// an AcceptAsync call, then the AcceptSocket is cleared since it will create a new one for
    /// the new user.
    /// </summary>
    /// <param name="e">null if posted from startup, otherwise a <b>SocketAsyncEventArgs</b> for reuse.</param>
    private void StartAccept(SocketAsyncEventArgs e)
    {
        if (e == null)
        {
            e = m_EventArgsPool.Pop();
            e.Completed += Accept_Completed;
        }
        else
        {
            e.AcceptSocket = null;
        }

        if (m_ListenSocket.AcceptAsync(e) == false)
        {
            Accept_Completed(this, e);
        }
    }

    /// <summary>
    /// Completion callback routine for the AcceptAsync post. This will verify that the Accept occured
    /// and then setup a Receive chain to begin receiving data.
    /// </summary>
    /// <param name="sender">object which posted the AcceptAsync</param>
    /// <param name="e">Information about the Accept call.</param>
    private void Accept_Completed(object sender, SocketAsyncEventArgs e)
    {
        //
        // Socket Options
        //
        e.AcceptSocket.NoDelay = true;

        //
        // Create and setup a new connection object for this user
        //
        Connection connection = new Connection(this, e.AcceptSocket);

        //
        // Tell the client that we will be echo'ing data sent
        //
        DisableEcho(connection);

        //
        // Post the first receive
        //
        SocketAsyncEventArgs args = m_EventArgsPool.Pop();
        args.UserToken = connection;

        //
        // Connect Event
        //
        if (Connected != null)
        {
            Connected(this, args);
        }

        args.Completed += Receive_Completed;
        PostReceive(args);

        //
        // Post another accept
        //
        StartAccept(e);
    }

    //
    // RECEIVE
    //    

    /// <summary>
    /// Post an asynchronous receive on the socket.
    /// </summary>
    /// <param name="e">Used to store information about the Receive call.</param>
    private void PostReceive(SocketAsyncEventArgs e)
    {
        Connection connection = e.UserToken as Connection;

        if (connection != null)
        {
            connection.ReceiveBuffer.EnsureCapacity(64);
            e.SetBuffer(connection.ReceiveBuffer.DataBuffer, connection.ReceiveBuffer.Count, connection.ReceiveBuffer.Remaining);

            if (connection.Socket.ReceiveAsync(e) == false)
            {
                Receive_Completed(this, e);
            }              
        }
    }

    /// <summary>
    /// Receive completion callback. Should verify the connection, and then notify any event listeners
    /// that data has been received. For now it is always expected that the data will be handled by the
    /// listeners and thus the buffer is cleared after every call.
    /// </summary>
    /// <param name="sender">object which posted the ReceiveAsync</param>
    /// <param name="e">Information about the Receive call.</param>
    private void Receive_Completed(object sender, SocketAsyncEventArgs e)
    {
        Connection connection = e.UserToken as Connection;

        if (e.BytesTransferred == 0 || e.SocketError != SocketError.Success || connection == null)
        {
            Disconnect(e);
            return;
        }

        connection.ReceiveBuffer.UpdateCount(e.BytesTransferred);

        OnDataReceived(e);

        HandleCommand(e);
        Echo(e);

        OnLineReceived(connection);

        PostReceive(e);
    }

    /// <summary>
    /// Handles Event of Data being Received.
    /// </summary>
    /// <param name="e">Information about the received data.</param>
    protected void OnDataReceived(SocketAsyncEventArgs e)
    {
        if (DataReceived != null)
        {                
            DataReceived(this, e);
        }
    }

    /// <summary>
    /// Handles Event of a Line being Received.
    /// </summary>
    /// <param name="connection">User connection.</param>
    protected void OnLineReceived(Connection connection)
    {
        if (LineReceived != null)
        {
            int index = 0;
            int start = 0;

            while ((index = connection.ReceiveBuffer.IndexOf('\n', index)) != -1)
            {
                string s = connection.ReceiveBuffer.GetString(start, index - start - 1);
                s = s.Backspace();

                LineReceivedEventArgs args = new LineReceivedEventArgs(connection, s);
                Delegate[] delegates = LineReceived.GetInvocationList();

                foreach (Delegate d in delegates)
                {
                    d.DynamicInvoke(new object[] { this, args });

                    if (args.Handled == true)
                    {
                        break;
                    }
                }

                if (args.Handled == false)
                {
                    connection.CommandBuffer.Enqueue(s);
                }

                start = index;
                index++;
            }

            if (start > 0)
            {
                connection.ReceiveBuffer.Reset(0, start + 1);
            }
        }
    }

    //
    // SEND
    //

    /// <summary>
    /// Overloaded. Sends a string over the telnet socket.
    /// </summary>
    /// <param name="connection">Connection to send data on.</param>
    /// <param name="s">Data to send.</param>
    /// <returns>true if the data was sent successfully.</returns>
    public bool Send(Connection connection, string s)
    {
        if (String.IsNullOrEmpty(s) == false)
        {
            return Send(connection, Encoding.Default.GetBytes(s));
        }

        return false;
    }

    /// <summary>
    /// Overloaded. Sends an array of data to the client.
    /// </summary>
    /// <param name="connection">Connection to send data on.</param>
    /// <param name="data">Data to send.</param>
    /// <returns>true if the data was sent successfully.</returns>
    public bool Send(Connection connection, byte[] data)
    {
        return Send(connection, data, 0, data.Length);
    }

    public bool Send(Connection connection, char c)
    {
        return Send(connection, new byte[] { (byte)c }, 0, 1);
    }

    /// <summary>
    /// Sends an array of data to the client.
    /// </summary>
    /// <param name="connection">Connection to send data on.</param>
    /// <param name="data">Data to send.</param>
    /// <param name="offset">Starting offset of date in the buffer.</param>
    /// <param name="length">Amount of data in bytes to send.</param>
    /// <returns></returns>
    public bool Send(Connection connection, byte[] data, int offset, int length)
    {
        bool status = true;

        if (connection.Socket == null || connection.Socket.Connected == false)
        {
            return false;
        }

        SocketAsyncEventArgs args = m_EventArgsPool.Pop();
        args.UserToken = connection;
        args.Completed += Send_Completed;
        args.SetBuffer(data, offset, length);

        try
        {
            if (connection.Socket.SendAsync(args) == false)
            {
                Send_Completed(this, args);
            }
        }
        catch (ObjectDisposedException)
        {                
            //
            // return the SocketAsyncEventArgs back to the pool and return as the
            // socket has been shutdown and disposed of
            //
            m_EventArgsPool.Push(args);
            status = false;
        }

        return status;
    }

    /// <summary>
    /// Sends a command telling the client that the server WILL echo data.
    /// </summary>
    /// <param name="connection">Connection to disable echo on.</param>
    public void DisableEcho(Connection connection)
    {
        byte[] b = new byte[] { 255, 251, 1 };
        Send(connection, b);
    }

    /// <summary>
    /// Completion callback for SendAsync.
    /// </summary>
    /// <param name="sender">object which initiated the SendAsync</param>
    /// <param name="e">Information about the SendAsync call.</param>
    private void Send_Completed(object sender, SocketAsyncEventArgs e)
    {
        e.Completed -= Send_Completed;              
        m_EventArgsPool.Push(e);
    }        

    /// <summary>
    /// Handles a Telnet command.
    /// </summary>
    /// <param name="e">Information about the data received.</param>
    private void HandleCommand(SocketAsyncEventArgs e)
    {
        Connection c = e.UserToken as Connection;

        if (c == null || e.BytesTransferred < 3)
        {
            return;
        }

        for (int i = 0; i < e.BytesTransferred; i += 3)
        {
            if (e.BytesTransferred - i < 3)
            {
                break;
            }

            if (e.Buffer[i] == (int)TelnetCommand.IAC)
            {
                TelnetCommand command = (TelnetCommand)e.Buffer[i + 1];
                TelnetOption option = (TelnetOption)e.Buffer[i + 2];

                switch (command)
                {
                    case TelnetCommand.DO:
                        if (option == TelnetOption.Echo)
                        {
                            // ECHO
                        }
                        break;
                    case TelnetCommand.WILL:
                        if (option == TelnetOption.Echo)
                        {
                            // ECHO
                        }
                        break;
                }

                c.ReceiveBuffer.Remove(i, 3);
            }
        }          
    }

    /// <summary>
    /// Echoes data back to the client.
    /// </summary>
    /// <param name="e">Information about the received data to be echoed.</param>
    private void Echo(SocketAsyncEventArgs e)
    {
        Connection connection = e.UserToken as Connection;

        if (connection == null)
        {
            return;
        }

        //
        // backspacing would cause the cursor to proceed beyond the beginning of the input line
        // so prevent this
        //
        string bs = connection.ReceiveBuffer.ToString();

        if (bs.CountAfterBackspace() < 0)
        {
            return;
        }

        //
        // find the starting offset (first non-backspace character)
        //
        int i = 0;

        for (i = 0; i < connection.ReceiveBuffer.Count; i++)
        {
            if (connection.ReceiveBuffer[i] != '\b')
            {
                break;
            }
        }

        string s = Encoding.Default.GetString(e.Buffer, Math.Max(e.Offset, i), e.BytesTransferred);

        if (connection.Secure)
        {
            s = s.ReplaceNot("\r\n\b".ToCharArray(), '*');
        }

        s = s.Replace("\b", "\b \b");

        Send(connection, s);
    }

    //
    // DISCONNECT
    //

    /// <summary>
    /// Disconnects a socket.
    /// </summary>
    /// <remarks>
    /// It is expected that this disconnect is always posted by a failed receive call. Calling the public
    /// version of this method will cause the next posted receive to fail and this will cleanup properly.
    /// It is not advised to call this method directly.
    /// </remarks>
    /// <param name="e">Information about the socket to be disconnected.</param>
    private void Disconnect(SocketAsyncEventArgs e)
    {
        Connection connection = e.UserToken as Connection;

        if (connection == null)
        {
            throw (new ArgumentNullException("e.UserToken"));
        }

        try
        {
            connection.Socket.Shutdown(SocketShutdown.Both);
        }
        catch
        {
        }

        connection.Socket.Close();

        if (Disconnected != null)
        {
            Disconnected(this, e);
        }

        e.Completed -= Receive_Completed;
        m_EventArgsPool.Push(e);
    }

    /// <summary>
    /// Marks a specific connection for graceful shutdown. The next receive or send to be posted
    /// will fail and close the connection.
    /// </summary>
    /// <param name="connection"></param>
    public void Disconnect(Connection connection)
    {
        try
        {
            connection.Socket.Shutdown(SocketShutdown.Both);
        }
        catch (Exception)
        {
        }            
    }

    /// <summary>
    /// Telnet command codes.
    /// </summary>
    internal enum TelnetCommand
    {
        SE = 240,
        NOP = 241,
        DM = 242,
        BRK = 243,
        IP = 244,
        AO = 245,
        AYT = 246,
        EC = 247,
        EL = 248,
        GA = 249,
        SB = 250,
        WILL = 251,
        WONT = 252,
        DO = 253,
        DONT = 254,
        IAC = 255
    }

    /// <summary>
    /// Telnet command options.
    /// </summary>
    internal enum TelnetOption
    {
        Echo = 1,
        SuppressGoAhead = 3,
        Status = 5,
        TimingMark = 6,
        TerminalType = 24,
        WindowSize = 31,
        TerminalSpeed = 32,
        RemoteFlowControl = 33,
        LineMode = 34,
        EnvironmentVariables = 36
    }
}

Answer 2

I would recommend to read these books on ACE

• C++ Network Programming: Mastering Complexity Using ACE and Patterns
• C++ Network Programming: Systematic Reuse with ACE and Frameworks

to get ideas about patterns allowing you to create an efficient server.

Although ACE is implemented in C++ the books cover a lot of useful patterns that can be used in any programming language.

Answer 3

There used to be a really good discussion of scalable TCP/IP using .NET written by Chris Mullins of Coversant, unfortunately it appears his blog has disappeared from its prior location, so I will try to piece together his advice from memory (some useful comments of his appear in this thread: C++ vs. C#: Developing a highly scalable IOCP server)

First and foremost, note that both using Begin/End and the Async methods on the Socket class make use of IO Completion Ports (IOCP) to provide scalability. This makes a much bigger difference (when used correctly; see below) to scalability than which of the two methods you actually pick to implement your solution.

Chris Mullins' posts were based on using Begin/End, which is the one I personally have experience with. Note that Chris put together a solution based on this that scaled up to 10,000s of concurrent client connections on a 32-bit machine with 2GB of memory, and well into 100,000s on a 64-bit platform with sufficient memory. From my own experience with this technique (altho nowhere near this kind of load) I have no reason to doubt these indicative figures.

IOCP versus thread-per-connection or 'select' primitives

The reason you want to use a mechanism that uses IOCP under the hood is that it uses a very low-level Windows thread pool that does not wake up any threads until there is actual data on the IO channel that you are trying to read from (note that IOCP can be used for file IO as well). The benefit of this is that Windows does not have to switch to a thread only to find that there is no data yet anyway, so this reduces the number of context switches your server will have to make to the bare minimum required.

Context switches is what will definitely kill the 'thread-per-connection' mechanism, although this is a viable solution if you are only dealing with a few dozen connections. This mechanism is however by no stretch of the imagination 'scalable'.

Important considerations when using IOCP

Memory

First and foremost it is critical to understand that IOCP can easily result in memory issues under .NET if your implementation is too naive. Every IOCP BeginReceive call will result in "pinning" of the buffer you are reading into. For a good explanation of why this is a problem, see: Yun Jin's Weblog: OutOfMemoryException and Pinning.

Luckily this problem can be avoided, but it requires a bit of a trade-off. The suggested solution is to allocate a big byte[] buffer at application start-up (or close thereto), of at least 90KB or-so (as of .NET 2, required size may be larger in later versions). The reason to do this is that large memory allocations automatically end up in a non-compacting memory segment (The Large Object Heap) that is effectively automatically pinned. By allocating one large buffer at start-up you make sure that this block of unmovable memory is at a relatively 'low address' where it will not get in the way and cause fragmentation.

You then can use offsets to segment this one big buffer into separate areas for each connection that needs to read some data. This is where a trade-off comes into play; since this buffer needs to be pre-allocated, you will have to decide how much buffer space you need per connection, and what upper limit you want to set on the number of connections you want to scale to (or, you can implement an abstraction that can allocate additional pinned buffers once you need them).

The simplest solution would be to assign every connection a single byte at a unique offset within this buffer. Then you can make a BeginReceive call for a single byte to be read, and perform the rest of the reading as a result of the callback you get.

Processing

When you get the callback from the Begin call you made, it is very important to realise that the code in the callback will execute on the low-level IOCP thread. It is absolutely essential that you avoid lengthy operations in this callback. Using these threads for complex processing will kill your scalability just as effectively as using 'thread-per-connection'.

The suggested solution is to use the callback only to queue up a work item to process the incoming data, that will be executed on some other thread. Avoid any potentially blocking operations inside the callback so that the IOCP thread can return to its pool as quickly as possible. In .NET 4.0 I'd suggest the easiest solution is to spawn a Task, giving it a reference to the client socket and a copy of the first byte that was already read by the BeginReceive call. This task is then responsible for reading all data from the socket that represent the request you are processing, executing it, and then making a new BeginReceive call to queue the socket for IOCP once more. Pre .NET 4.0, you can use the ThreadPool, or create your own threaded work-queue implementation.

Summary

Basically, I'd suggest using Kevin's sample code for this solution, with the following added warnings:

• Make sure the buffer you pass to BeginReceive is already 'pinned'
• Make sure the callback you pass to BeginReceive does nothing more than queue up a task to handle the actual processing of the incoming data

When you do that, I have no doubt you could replicate Chris' results in scaling up to potentially hundreds of thousands of simultaneous clients (given the right hardware and an efficient implementation of your own processing code ofcourse ;)

Answer 4

I would use SEDA or a lightweight threading library (erlang or newer linux see NTPL scalability on the server side). Async coding is very cumbersome if your communication isn't :)

Answer 5

to people copy pasting the accepted answer, you can rewrite the acceptCallback method, removing all calls of _serverSocket.BeginAccept(new AsyncCallback(acceptCallback), _serverSocket); and put it in a finally{} clause, this way:

private void acceptCallback(IAsyncResult result)
    {
       xConnection conn = new xConnection();
       try
       {
         //Finish accepting the connection
         System.Net.Sockets.Socket s = (System.Net.Sockets.Socket)result.AsyncState;
         conn = new xConnection();
         conn.socket = s.EndAccept(result);
         conn.buffer = new byte[_bufferSize];
         lock (_sockets)
         {
           _sockets.Add(conn);
         }
         //Queue recieving of data from the connection
         conn.socket.BeginReceive(conn.buffer, 0, conn.buffer.Length, SocketFlags.None, new AsyncCallback(ReceiveCallback), conn);
       }
       catch (SocketException e)
       {
         if (conn.socket != null)
         {
           conn.socket.Close();
           lock (_sockets)
           {
             _sockets.Remove(conn);
           }
         }
       }
       catch (Exception e)
       {
         if (conn.socket != null)
         {
           conn.socket.Close();
           lock (_sockets)
           {
             _sockets.Remove(conn);
           }
         }
       }
       finally
       {
         //Queue the next accept, think this should be here, stop attacks based on killing the waiting listeners
         _serverSocket.BeginAccept(new AsyncCallback(acceptCallback), _serverSocket);       
       }
     }

you could even remove the first catch since its content is the same but it's a template method and you should use typed exception to better handle the exceptions and understand what caused the error, so just implement those catches with some useful code

Answer 6

I've written something similar to this in the past. From my research years ago showed that writing your own socket implementation was the best bet, using the Asynchronous sockets. This meant that clients not really doing anything actually required relatively little resources. Anything that does occur is handled by the .net thread pool.

I wrote it as a class that manages all connections for the servers.

I simply used a list to hold all the client connections, but if you need faster lookups for larger lists, you can write it however you want.

private List<xConnection> _sockets;

Also you need the socket actually listenning for incomming connections.

private System.Net.Sockets.Socket _serverSocket;

The start method actually starts the server socket and begins listening for any incomming connections.

public bool Start()
{
  System.Net.IPHostEntry localhost = System.Net.Dns.GetHostEntry(System.Net.Dns.GetHostName());
  System.Net.IPEndPoint serverEndPoint;
  try
  {
     serverEndPoint = new System.Net.IPEndPoint(localhost.AddressList[0], _port);
  }
  catch (System.ArgumentOutOfRangeException e)
  {
    throw new ArgumentOutOfRangeException("Port number entered would seem to be invalid, should be between 1024 and 65000", e);
  }
  try
  {
    _serverSocket = new System.Net.Sockets.Socket(serverEndPoint.Address.AddressFamily, SocketType.Stream, ProtocolType.Tcp);
   }
   catch (System.Net.Sockets.SocketException e)
   {
      throw new ApplicationException("Could not create socket, check to make sure not duplicating port", e);
    }
    try
    {
      _serverSocket.Bind(serverEndPoint);
      _serverSocket.Listen(_backlog);
    }
    catch (Exception e)
    {
       throw new ApplicationException("Error occured while binding socket, check inner exception", e);
    }
    try
    {
       //warning, only call this once, this is a bug in .net 2.0 that breaks if 
       // you're running multiple asynch accepts, this bug may be fixed, but
       // it was a major pain in the ass previously, so make sure there is only one
       //BeginAccept running
       _serverSocket.BeginAccept(new AsyncCallback(acceptCallback), _serverSocket);
    }
    catch (Exception e)
    {
       throw new ApplicationException("Error occured starting listeners, check inner exception", e);
    }
    return true;
 }

I'd just like to note the exception handling code looks bad, but the reason for it is I had exception suppression code in there so that any exceptions would be suppressed and return false if a config option was set, but I wanted to remove it for brevity sake.

The _serverSocket.BeginAccept(new AsyncCallback(acceptCallback)), _serverSocket) above essentially sets our server socket to call the acceptCallback method whenever a user connects. This method runs from the .Net threadpool, which automatically handles creating additional worker threads if you have many blocking operations. This should optimally handle any load on the server.

    private void acceptCallback(IAsyncResult result)
    {
       xConnection conn = new xConnection();
       try
       {
         //Finish accepting the connection
         System.Net.Sockets.Socket s = (System.Net.Sockets.Socket)result.AsyncState;
         conn = new xConnection();
         conn.socket = s.EndAccept(result);
         conn.buffer = new byte[_bufferSize];
         lock (_sockets)
         {
           _sockets.Add(conn);
         }
         //Queue recieving of data from the connection
         conn.socket.BeginReceive(conn.buffer, 0, conn.buffer.Length, SocketFlags.None, new AsyncCallback(ReceiveCallback), conn);
         //Queue the accept of the next incomming connection
         _serverSocket.BeginAccept(new AsyncCallback(acceptCallback), _serverSocket);
       }
       catch (SocketException e)
       {
         if (conn.socket != null)
         {
           conn.socket.Close();
           lock (_sockets)
           {
             _sockets.Remove(conn);
           }
         }
         //Queue the next accept, think this should be here, stop attacks based on killing the waiting listeners
         _serverSocket.BeginAccept(new AsyncCallback(acceptCallback), _serverSocket);
       }
       catch (Exception e)
       {
         if (conn.socket != null)
         {
           conn.socket.Close();
           lock (_sockets)
           {
             _sockets.Remove(conn);
           }
         }
         //Queue the next accept, think this should be here, stop attacks based on killing the waiting listeners
         _serverSocket.BeginAccept(new AsyncCallback(acceptCallback), _serverSocket);
       }
     }

The above code essentially just finished accepting the connection that comes in, queues BeginReceive which is a callback that will run when the client sends data, and then queues the next acceptCallback which will accept the next client connection that comes in.

The BeginReceive method call is what tells the socket what to do when it receives data from the client. For BeginReceive, you need to give it a byte array, which is where it will copy the data when the client sends data. The ReceiveCallback method will get called, which is how we handle receiving data.

private void ReceiveCallback(IAsyncResult result)
{
  //get our connection from the callback
  xConnection conn = (xConnection)result.AsyncState;
  //catch any errors, we'd better not have any
  try
  {
    //Grab our buffer and count the number of bytes receives
    int bytesRead = conn.socket.EndReceive(result);
    //make sure we've read something, if we haven't it supposadly means that the client disconnected
    if (bytesRead > 0)
    {
      //put whatever you want to do when you receive data here

      //Queue the next receive
      conn.socket.BeginReceive(conn.buffer, 0, conn.buffer.Length, SocketFlags.None, new AsyncCallback(ReceiveCallback), conn);
     }
     else
     {
       //Callback run but no data, close the connection
       //supposadly means a disconnect
       //and we still have to close the socket, even though we throw the event later
       conn.socket.Close();
       lock (_sockets)
       {
         _sockets.Remove(conn);
       }
     }
   }
   catch (SocketException e)
   {
     //Something went terribly wrong
     //which shouldn't have happened
     if (conn.socket != null)
     {
       conn.socket.Close();
       lock (_sockets)
       {
         _sockets.Remove(conn);
       }
     }
   }
 }

EDIT: In this pattern I forgot to mention that in this area of code:

//put whatever you want to do when you receive data here

//Queue the next receive
conn.socket.BeginReceive(conn.buffer, 0, conn.buffer.Length, SocketFlags.None, new AsyncCallback(ReceiveCallback), conn);

What I would generally do is in the whatever you want code, is do reassembly of packets into messages, and then create them as jobs on the thread pool. This way the BeginReceive of the next block from the client isn't delayed while whatever message processing code is running.

The accept callback finishes reading the data socket by calling end receive. This fills the buffer provided in the begin receive function. Once you do whatever you want where I left the comment, we call the next BeginReceive method which will run the callback again if the client sends any more data. Now here's the really tricky part, when the client sends data, your receive callback might only be called with part of the message. Reassembly can become very very complicated. I used my own method and created a sort of proprietary protocol to do this. I left it out, but if you request, I can add it in. This handler was actually the most complicated piece of code I had ever written.

public bool Send(byte[] message, xConnection conn)
{
  if (conn != null && conn.socket.Connected)
  {
    lock (conn.socket)
    {
    //we use a blocking mode send, no async on the outgoing
    //since this is primarily a multithreaded application, shouldn't cause problems to send in blocking mode
       conn.socket.Send(bytes, bytes.Length, SocketFlags.None);
     }
   }
   else
     return false;
   return true;
 }

The above send method actually uses a synchronous Send call, for me that was fine due to the message sizes and the multithreaded nature of my application. If you want to send to every client, you simply need to loop through the _sockets List.

The xConnection class you see referenced above is basically a simple wrapper for a socket to include the byte buffer, and in my implementation some extras.

public class xConnection : xBase
{
  public byte[] buffer;
  public System.Net.Sockets.Socket socket;
}

Also for reference here are the usings I include since I always get annoyed when they aren't included.

using System.Net.Sockets;

I hope that's helpful, it may not be the cleanest code, but it works. There are also some nuances to the code which you should be weary about changing. For one, only have a single BeginAccept called at any one time. There used to be a very annoying .net bug around this, which was years ago so I don't recall the details.

Also, in the ReceiveCallback code, we process anything received from the socket before we queue the next receive. This means that for a single socket, we're only actually ever in ReceiveCallback once at any point in time, and we don't need to use thread synchronization. However, if you reorder this to call the next receive immediately after pulling the data, which might be a little faster, you will need to make sure you properly synchronize the threads.

Also, I hacked out alot of my code, but left the essence of what's happening in place. This should be a good start for you're design. Leave a comment if you have any more questions around this.