well i found the problem myself. but i still wonder about the address/proto families and .bind(). Alexander K wrote: > > hostname = gethostbyname(gethostname())[0] i had confused gethostbyname() with gethostbyaddr(), which i had used before, and which returns a tuple, not a string... tia / alex k . . ... ~~~:[ com dot altavista at ak42 ]:~~~ ...