The framework provides an asynchronous event-driven network application and tools for rapid development of maintainable high performance & high scalability protocol servers & clients.

It simplifies and streamlines network programming such as TCP and UDP socket server.

Netty is designed carefully with the experiences earned from the implementation of a lot of protocols such as FTP, SMTP, HTTP, and various binary and text-based legacy protocols.

As a result, Netty has succeeded to find a way to achieve ease of development, performance, stability, and flexibility without a compromise.

Here are some key features of "The Netty Project":

Design:
· Unified API for various transport types - blocking and non-blocking socket
· Based on a flexible and extensible event model which allows clear separation of concerns
· Highly customizable thread model - single thread, one or more thread pools such as SEDA
· True connectionless datagram socket support (since 3.1)

Ease of use:
· Well-documented Javadoc, user guide and examples
· No more big fat monolithic core which has unnecessary features
· No additional dependencies but JDK 1.5 (or above)

Performance:
· Better throughput, lower latency
· Less resource consumption
· Minimized unnecessary memory copy

Robustness:
· No more OutOfMemoryError due to fast, slow or overloaded connection.
· No more unfair read / write ratio often found in a NIO application under high speed network
· Tested against various JDK versions and operating systems (see the live report)

Security:
· Complete SSL/TLS and StartTLS support
· Runs OK in a restricted environment such as Applet and Google Android