Best Practice: generating and parsing network packets for a known protocol in C#?

Question

I tried asking a similar question recently however after several answers I realized it wasn't the correct thing to ask.

Is there a guide or a generally accepted practice for generating and parsing network packets based on an existing protocol like SMPP (Short Message Peer-to-Peer Protocol [Used for SMS Messages]) or various chat protocols like HOTLINE or IRC with C#.

One of the answers mentioned Google Protocol Buffers and a .NET version. After looking at that I realized that serialization is extremely useful if you have control over both ends (client and server). Where I would be following the protocol spec.

Generating In the past I have made a class or structure with properties that are part of the network packet / protocol:

// PSEUDO CODE
class NetworkObject 
{
    private int length;
    private string data;

    // ...

    public byte[] GetBytes() 
    {
     // Convert string and int to byte array
     return byte array;
    }
}

The class has a byte[] GetBytes() method which I call once I've set the appropriate properties. I take that byte array and send it over the network. In my previous question one of the answers suggested storing the data in a memory stream or bytestream which seems like a better idea.

It seems like my byte array method is probably slower than passing a network stream to a method that writes the packet data according to class properties directly to the stream. Which is what I will probably do unless I'm missing something really big here.

Parsing When parsing I use various case statements to step through the various PDUs and generate a NetworkObject with the appropriate properties populated and do with it as I see fit.

Answer 1

Why don't you try Serialization of objects?

Answer 2

perhaps try a framework like apache mina or jboss netty.