Doing networking in the standard library without introducing a proper async framework is just more madness. Polishing off promises and futures, and getting coroutines nailed down, would have made introducing an intuitive network library a doddle.
Instead we'll get something carved out of ASIO, which is a complete mess full of gross unintuitive APIs and callbacks.
What's wrong with ASIO interface? My only issue with it is that once a socket is bound to an io_service it can't be easily rebound to another one.
For many applications where C++ is used, promises and futures introduce unnecessary overhead. On the other hand an ASIO-like interface works just fine.
Additionally, ASIO, and by extension the network proposal, have transparent opt-in support for futures via a special callback type.
Instead we'll get something carved out of ASIO, which is a complete mess full of gross unintuitive APIs and callbacks.