Sending data to robot from driver station computer

[JohnM]

The language my team is C++. Anyways lets say you wanted to make a program run on your computer that was separate from the Driver Station software, and that program had to send commands to the robot.

1. How would you go about sending commands to the robot easily? Any avaible classes?
2. Also how would you make the robot easily understand these commands?

Note: This question might seem vague to probably most of you but I wasn't sure how to word this in the best possible way. If you have any specific questions about this please ask and I will try to clear it up some more.