Probably Winsock-related. Sockets required third party support in DOS and required an extension program on Win3.1x, but Win95 standardised them in the OS API. So, if you as a programmer want to do sockets programming without obscure old software that probably lacks documentation, Windows 95 is the way to go.
I set that up recently and found it refreshingly simple. Just load a packet driver (finding the right packet driver for your card is the biggest potential hurdle IMO), set up a system wide configuration file (to be fair, one for each network stack you'll be using; in my case mTCP and WATTCP), point to it with some environment variable in AUTOEXEC and run the network software.
It brings a smile though that I occasionally have to renew my DHCP lease manually.
You can read about the history of winsock here: https://tangentsoft.net/wskfaq/articles/history.html