FTP Program – A file transfer program which can transfer files back and forth from a remote web sever.
Get Atomic Time from Internet Clock – This program will get the true atomic time from an atomic time clock on the Internet. There are various clocks across the world. Do a search for a list of them.
Chat Application (IRC or MSN Style) – Create a chat application that can create simple chat rooms like on Internet Relay Chat (IRC) or a more direct chatting style like MSN. For added complexity, create your own protocol to facilitate this chatting.
Fetch Current Weather – Get the current weather for a given zip/postal code.
P2P File Sharing App – Create a program like LimeWire, FrostWire, Bearshare, or a torrent style application.
Port Scanner – Enter an IP address and a port range where the program will then attempt to find open ports on the given computer by connecting to each of them. On any successful connections mark the port as open.
Mail Checker (POP3 / IMAP) – The user enters various account information include web server and IP, protocol type (POP3 or IMAP) and the application will check for email on several accounts at a given interval.
Packet Sniffer – A utility program that will read packets coming in and out of the machine along with related information like destination and payload size.
Country from IP Lookup – Enter an IP address and find the country that IP is registered in.
Whois Search Tool – Enter an IP or host address and have it look it up through whois and return the results to you.
Zip / Postal Code Lookup – Enter a zip or postal code and have it return which city/cities that are in that zip code.
Remote Login – Create a remote desktop style application which can see and control the remote computer (given you have permissions). It may require the use of your own private network and a second computer to test with.
Site Checker with Time Scheduling – An application that attempts to connect to a website or server every so many minutes or a given time and check if it is up. If it is down, it will notify you by email or by posting a notice on screen.
Small Web Server – A simple web server that can serve HTML files that contain Javascript and other forms of non-code executing code. Added complexity would be to try and implement streaming video, create a server-side language, or serve up other stream types.
Web Bot – An automated program which carries out tasks on the web including checking websites, page scraping, and summarization of data or web posting.