> use a well-designed message queue service

There is a faq about ZeroMQ written in the Monty Pythonesque fashion of "other than that, what does ZeroMQ do for us?"

I can't quite find it in my bookmarks, but it went by the "so it gives you sockets", "but also message batching" ... "but other than batching, what does it give us?".

Also, the whole problem with using just TCP is that often it needs kernel level tuning - like you need to fix INET MSL on some BSD boxes to avoid port exhaustion or tweak DSACK when you have hanging connections in the network stack (like S3 connections hanging when SACK/DSACK is on).

A standard library is likely to have bugs too, but hopefully someone else has found it before you run into it.