Thanks for all the answers. The first ones were a lot of help, and although it seemed to me that you were all talking in tongues after that, it sure sounds interesting.
I checked out the tcpclient code by martin peach. The thread solution could be useful, but i also spotted something else: t_clock, clock_new etc. I think that is exactly what i need.
Until now I always used the end of Ioannes's externals tutorial as sort of a reference guide. I should have read that he only talks about some important functions, and not about all of them.
Now for the new question: is there a complete reference guide somewhere for pd types and functions you can use in externals? I did not really find one yet. But maybe I'm looking in the wrong places? (I'm somewhat hoping I don't have to scan through m_pd.h myself yet.)
Regards,
yvan