We present MPWide, a platform-independent communication library for performing message passing between computers. Our library allows coupling of several local message passing interface (MPI) applications through a long-distance network and is specifically optimized for such communications. The implementation is deliberately kept lightweight and platform independent, and the library can be installed and used without administrative privileges. The only requirements are a C++ compiler and at least one open port to a wide-area network on each site. In this paper we present the library, describe the user interface, present performance tests and apply MPWide in a large-scale cosmological N-body simulation on a network of two computers, one in Amsterdam and the other in Tokyo. © 2010 IOP Publishing Ltd.