Try it and find out for yourself.

well thats not very helpful =(. I am just looking for a simple idea if anyone can give me one. Nothing super in depth

The best way to learn how something works is to try it out yourself and test it on your own computer with your own code. If you want to every program professionally then you will have to learn how to do your own experiments to see what works and what doesn't.

If you want a simple answer then: yes you can probably mix the two, and no they are not interchangeable.

I know this isn't what you are asking but may I suggest you use something a little more portable than winsock. That would be Boost asio. There are good examples of an echo client/server here: http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_37_0.../examples.html

There are other options too, if you look around.

I suppose it doesn't hurt to learn the Windows API and Winsock for experience and to see another way of doing things, but someone would have to pay me very well to even think about using them.

You could just look at the APIs and see for yourself.

I suggested that too be apparently he is too lazy to do it.

Isn't that what "they" say about programmers: we're lazy?

lazy? Not at all, I know many different api's have functionality that allows you to do the same thing as winsock, but I am more familiar with winsock then other api's similar functions. Perhapes if you read my original SIMPLE question, these subtle insults would not be needed.

I've been called a lot of things in my life, but "lazy" isn't one of them. I would have taken only about an hour or less to find out the answer to that op's question, but he messed around for several hours trying to get someone else to do it for him.