The namespace contains classes that support and handle channels and channel sinks, which are used as the transport medium when a client calls a method on a remote object.

Channels are objects that transport messages between applications across remoting boundaries, whether between application domains, processes, or computers. A channel can listen on an endpoint for inbound messages, send outbound messages to another endpoint, or both. This enables you to plug in a wide range of protocols, even if the common language runtime is not at the other end of the channel.

Channels send each object along a chain of channel sink objects prior to sending or after receiving a message. This sink chain contains sinks required for basic channel functionality, such as transport or stack builder sinks, but you can customize the channel sink chain to perform special tasks with a message or a stream. Each sink in each chain receives the object, performs a specific operation, and passes it on to the next sink in the chain. There is no rule that the exact object received by a message sink must be passed on to the next sink, though this will often be the case.

For more information, see Channels and Sinks and Sink Chains.