Cabal Online Gateway/Proxy

Hmm... Not sure about Linux, but Unix supported Named Pipe before TCP/IP. They where actually part of the C "streams" system they built into the "everything is a file" philosophy. It's traditionally just a shared memory stream.

Windows Named Pipes work locally even if you don't have the TCP/IP stack loaded. Though Windows hasn't supported "Named Pipes" for nearly as long. It was very unreliable on V4.

SMB (CIFS) is typically overlayed on TCP/IP, but can be run through other network protocols. (notably, we used to use NetBEUI a lot)

If the server is Linux based, I would suggest that the proxy should be so also. Certainly, the number of sockets should not be an issue on any Linux build. .Price. works in C#, encourage him to build against MONO. (I keep trying, but PT is always Windows, for shame)