The SocketClient provides the basic operations that are required of client objects accessing sockets. It is meant to be subclassed to avoid having to rewrite the same code over and over again to open a socket, close a socket, set timeouts, etc. Of special note is the setSocketFactory method, which allows you to control the type of Socket the SocketClient creates for initiating network connections. This is especially useful for adding SSL or proxy support as well as better support for applets. For example, you could create a SocketFactory that requests browser security capabilities before creating a socket. All classes derived from SocketClient should use the _socketFactory_ member variable to create Socket and ServerSocket instances rather than instanting them by directly invoking a constructor. By honoring this contract you guarantee that a user will always be able to provide his own Socket implementations by substituting his own SocketFactory.