Originally posted by Vicken Karaoghlanian:
You may want to consider Mastering Java 2, J2SE 1.4 as a general book. If you want more network specific books, you can try Java Network Programming.
I would agree that if you want to get into TCP/IP based communication that that O'Reilly's
Java Network Programming is a great book. One note though, Vicken's link is to the second edition of the book. The Third Edition came out this past October 2004 and covers significant updates in the 5.0 (aka 1.5) JDK. Info at
Amazon and
O'Reilly's site is available.
Also take a look at the 2nd edition of the Manning publishers book, also titled
Java Network Programming. While it is a bit old (published in May 1999) and based on JDK 1.2, it's fairly good in term of covering the basics. There are some sample chapters at
Manning's Website.
Lastly, a good overall book on advanced Java topics is
Core Java 2, Volume II: Advanced Features (7th Edition) . The 7th edition just came out this past November. More info available at
Amazon and the
Prentice Hall's site. It does a nice job of giving an overview of advanced features such as MultiThreading, Database Connectivity (i.e.
JDBC), networking, Remote Objects, etc. It is definitely not going to make you an expert in any of those areas, but does give you a good taste of them, form which you can dive into a book dedicated to one of those particular technologies, such as Java Network Programming.