Q2) Should I use DirectPlay or WinSock?
A2) As of Summer Update 2004, Microsoft has put DirectPlay into "sunset" mode, where they will not develop the API further. Microsoft now recommends you use WinSock for networking, until the re-cast X-box Live! technology is rolled out for PCs, probably around Longhorn time-frame. If you're on Linux, MacOS, or some other platform like that, life is easier: you only have regular sockets to work with. Luckily, sockets and WinSock code can look very similar if you stick to the Berkeley sockets functions of WinSock, and avoid WSA functions; you can write quite portable programs with a little bit of thought.
Remember to include <winsock2.h> before including <windows.h> in your win32 program, or compile errors will ensue. Also, always start your WinSock program with WSAStartup( MAKEWORD(2,2), ... ) to get version 2.2 of WinSock, as the older versions have bugs and limitations that you don't want to deal with. Finally, you need to link with ws2_32.lib on Win32 when using WinSock.
