I thought at first they were talking about that myself, but it seems that there was a separate winsock client released by Microsoft for 3.11

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_3.1x#Windows_for_Workgr...

Also, for your historical needs http://www.trumpet.com.au/index.php/downloads.html

Indeed. In the early 90s, it wasn't necessarily obvious that everybody needed a TCP/IP stack. "The Internet" was still essentially academic, and something the average person didn't really know anything about. Small PC LANs typically ran on some combination of IPX/SPX and NetBIOS.

3.11 laid the foundations for modular Windows networking, but included TCP/IP support was two years away in Windows 95, and even then it still wasn't installed by default(!). Microsoft took a while to catch on.

The Microsoft TCP/IP stack didn't include dial-up support until Windows 95, though, so it was useless for the vast majority of home users.

On those days home users were lucky if they had at least a BBS to connect to!