You might consider using CFNetwork instead of standard BSD sockets if your application has a need for a run-loop; that is, you'll be able to use CFNetwork without spinning up threads or writing your own polling routines. The CFNetwork framework also adds an easy mechanism to handle reading and writing through socket streams, and supports common protocols such as HTTP and FTP out of the box. This allows you to focus on the more important aspects of your code, relieving you from the need to support individual protocols. CFNetwork is also supported in Leopard, meaning you can easily port your networking code to the desktop.

In addition to the CFNetwork framework, the iPhone's foundation framework supports objects such asNSURLRequest, which can be used to directly load web objects from the Internet. These simple objects provide callbacks, allowing your application to simply request an object and receive a notification later on, once it's loaded.