I have one book on networking: Computer networking: A top down approach.

After I read it, I will need a lib to start, I don't care about security, compression, encryption and latency, I just want to add multiplayer to my paintball game. I just want to send some packets.

Maybe at some later stage, I will start caring about this stuff, but for now, I just want to see something that is barely working. What is the fastest way? I already use SDL as a wrapper for opengl, so SDL_net would be the easiest to set up. But I read somewhere that this is a low level lib, and I kind of prefer high level stuff, and I'm wondering what to choose in order to not reinvent the wheel, because I hate to do it. But of course it needs to be suitable for a noob.

Boost asio , if you use C++.

I will go with SDL_net, but thanks for the suggestion. boost asio will be plan B, I guess. :)

Promit, I was wondering, do I really need to read that book ( Computer networking: a top down approach ) before starting with networking, because I already read 100 pages, and the only thing I learned about is sniffing, spoofing, stupid cables and basic stuff about packet headers and osi model and I don't really see what this can help me with, should I read the whole book or directly start with raknet, what do you think?

Ok guys, I finally set up the RakNet lib for Code::Blocks, took me 3 hours because of some strict ansi stuff. Nevermind, I started the raknet tutorials and there are a lot of messed up terms like congestion control, NAT traversal and thread stuff, that's why I decided to return to that book of mine and continue with RakNet tomorrow. Stupid theory, why can't just people use simple words...

Guys, my basic chat program is ready. But I'm worried that if I send the program to my friends, they can somehow mess up with my laptop, because when I actually open a port without any security, I open myself to some bad stuff they can do to harm my pc. Could you give me some advice, something for starters?