There is RMI, which I understand to be relatively fragile, direct Socket connections, which is rather low level, and Strings, which while about as solid as it gets seems to be the metaphorical PHP.
What less basic options do I have for internet based Client/Server communication ? What are the advantages/disadvantages ? What are some concerns I should take into consideration ? Third party library suggestions are fine, as long as they stay platform independent (i.e. no restrictive native code).
Looking for options, not a definite answer, so I'm leaving the details of my own requirements blank.
解决方案
As you specified "internet based", there's a lot to be said for an HTTP-based, RESTful approach (I've highlighted some concerns you should consider):
Pros:
You can use/abuse one of the myriad web-tier frameworks for the server side (e.g. Spring MVC, Play!)
The low-level work has been done on client-side (Apache HTTPClient)
Plain-text protocol is easy to debug on the wire
Tons of tools available to help you debug the interactions (e.g. SoapUI) - you can pretend to be client OR server and so develop in isolation until the other end is ready
Using a well-known port (80/443) makes punching through corporate firewalls a whole lot easier
Cons:
There's a fairly major assumption that the server will be doing the lion's share of the work - if your model is "inverted" then it might not make much sense to be RESTful
Raw performance will be lower than a bits-on-the-wire socket-based approach
Plain-text protocol is easy to sniff on the wire (SSL can remedy this)