As expected, Silverlight 2.0 Beta 1 was released hours ago, and it comes with Socket Networking support. Silverlight applications can now make direct/persistent connections to remote server. There are however some restrictions:

  • Supports only TCP.
  • Connect to only site or host of origin. (Temporary restriction until future release of Silverlight 2.0)
  • Connect to only port range of 4502-4532.
Maybe there are some more. It is a bit early to list them all here.