I'm real experienced with Winsock/VB (that's what I spend most of my time doing), but I've never actually ran a server that used Winsock that handled more than even 20 connections at a time.

I'm making an instant messenger client/server in VB, and I'm wondering how well a server that supports over 32,000 simultaneous connections would handle? Assuming it was coded properly and the data parsing and other functions were completely optimized? What kind of computer would it take to handle this kind of server?

Should I consider multi-threading? What kind of computer should I build to host the server? Or should I find a dedicated server?

Writing/optimizing the code is no problem, but I just want to know what to expect.

If you're just going to post something like "Write it in C++" at least state WHY.

Thanks.