Using Silverlight for efficient low level communications (UDP socket usage and port restrictions)

For all of you guys that were hoping to use Silverlight for advanced low-level communications note the following excerpt

from the MSDN website about Working with sockets in Silverlight 2  beta 2:

"Currently, the only supported ProtocolType on Silverlight 2 is the TCP protocol.

One restriction on using sockets in Silverlight 2 is that the port range that a network application is allowed to connect to must be within the range of 4502-4534. These are the only ports allowed for connection using sockets from Silverlight 2 applications. If a connection is to a port is not within this port range, the connection attempt will fail."

This means that any UDP communication is banned and port number access is highly limited.

I for one hope this is only a temporary thing that would change in the final version 2 release.

The reason be is that there is a whole range of communication applications ranging from networking tools to multiplayer games that will never be implemented in Silverlight.

If Silverlight is to take its place as a true robust platform for RIA applications it should at the very least allow UDP access and a very wide range of port access.

Security concerns are important they should be addressed and dealt with but they should not cause this promising platform to become crippled.

JB