Newbie with a project

You can use any language you like, C++, VB.NET, C#, Java.
What language to chose depends on whether you already know a language. If you already know a programming language, use that one.

If you are going the C++ route, then you should read some documentation around sockets to write network code. Or, you can also use a higher level networking library to handle network connections, for example HawkNL (http://www.hawksoft.com/hawknl/).