Why bogus? I just needed some simple Address holder for IP addresses -- for higher level usage -- and this it perfectly works for me :). One simply could derive InetAddress et al from, let's say, "Address". This opens possibilities for introducing more generic address types. For me, the much more important thing in Anja the Reactor, by the way. It is an abstraction on signal handling and I/O management (see Schmidt et al). I've emphasized the address holders simply not to be off-topic :). CommonC++ is ok, but there was(?)|is no IPv6 support. ACE (see Schmidt et al), in turn, features IPv6 support. Only the library was much too big for the project I started. Staying (as) compatible (as possible) with Java seemed advantageous to be, though. ciao, phb