With the growth of the Internet and the increasing use of intranets across a broad spectrum of business areas, there has been a correspondingly large growth of interest in network programming, particularly in the use of client-server applications. Java's inbuilt network programming capabilities and its platform independence have made it a natural choice for network applications and it has, quite rightly, been referred to as 'the language of the internet'. Exceptionally difficult and fraught with pitfalls in most languages, the programming of network applications is greatly eased by the use of the Java libraries.   An Introduction to Network Programming with Java provides clear and practical guidance on all the essential aspects of network programming with Java, including the use of sockets, JDBC, servlets, JavaBeans, applets and JavaServer Pages (JSPs). The aim is to enable both students and professional programmers to pick up these vital skills as rapidly as possible, by providing clearly-worded explanations accompanied by short example programs that avoid the inclusion of extraneous code and concentrate upon the relevant concepts.