One of the issues involving XML-RPC.NET that turns up fairly frequently is when the library throws an instance of System.Net.WebException with the message ""The server committed a protocol violation". This usually occurs because from .NET 1.1 SP1 onwards the parsing of HTTP responses became much more strict, as a security measure to prevent attacks which exploit malformed HTTP status lines and headers. The strict behaviour can be switched off via the application config file:

<?xml version ="1.0"?>
<configuration>
  <system.net>
    <settings>
      <httpWebRequest useUnsafeHeaderParsing="true" />
    </settings>
  </system.net>
</configuration>

From .NET 2.0 this behaviour can be configured programmatically using the HttpWebRequestElement useUnsafeHeaderParsing property. At first when I read about this I assumed it was a property that can be set dynamically at runtime, for example in the same way as the HttpWebRequest KeepAlive property. But in fact its used in the new 2.0 configuration infrastructure to set the value in the config file (although once you do this the new value applies to the current running application as well as any apps launched afterwards. The new configuration infrastructure is pretty complex but this code seems to work ok:

Configuration config = ConfigurationManager.OpenExeConfiguration(
  ConfigurationUserLevel.None);
SettingsSection section = (SettingsSection)config.GetSection(
  "system.net/settings");
section.HttpWebRequest.UseUnsafeHeaderParsing = false;
config.Save();

ConfigurationUserLevel.None specifies that the configuration file in the same directory as the executable should be modified so this file has to be writable. The other options PerUserRoaming and PerUserRoamingAndLocal can be used in different scenarios.

Finally, I found the code below in a post on the .NET Framework Networking and Communication forum. This uses reflection to set the private field useUnsafeHeaderParsing to true and as a result may not be suitable in all scenarios where the relevant code access security permission is not available. (Note: add System.Configuration.dll as a reference to your project.)

public static bool SetAllowUnsafeHeaderParsing()
{
  //Get the assembly that contains the internal class
  Assembly aNetAssembly = Assembly.GetAssembly(
    typeof(System.Net.Configuration.SettingsSection));
  if (aNetAssembly != null)
  {
    //Use the assembly in order to get the internal type for 
    // the internal class
    Type aSettingsType = aNetAssembly.GetType(
      "System.Net.Configuration.SettingsSectionInternal");
    if (aSettingsType != null)
    {
      //Use the internal static property to get an instance 
      // of the internal settings class. If the static instance 
      // isn't created allready the property will create it for us.
      object anInstance = aSettingsType.InvokeMember("Section",
        BindingFlags.Static | BindingFlags.GetProperty 
        | BindingFlags.NonPublic, null, null, new object[] { });
      if (anInstance != null)
      {
        //Locate the private bool field that tells the 
        // framework is unsafe header parsing should be 
        // allowed or not
        FieldInfo aUseUnsafeHeaderParsing = aSettingsType.GetField(
          "useUnsafeHeaderParsing", 
          BindingFlags.NonPublic | BindingFlags.Instance);
        if (aUseUnsafeHeaderParsing != null)
        {
          aUseUnsafeHeaderParsing.SetValue(anInstance, true);
          return true;
        }
      }
    }
  }
  return false;
}
http://www.cookcomputing.com/blog/archives/2006_07.html