With only 20 users or so, your options are pretty much wide open. You can use TCP or UDP, a web server with HTTP. I’d use TCP myself.
It will be easy to update only 20 people with small updates within 15 seconds.
Here’s how to create a TCP server in C#.net
Here’s how to create a simple TCP server in Java.
I suggest using ProtoBufs for the binary protocol. Its simple, compact, and allows you to change your language without needing to rewrite protocol parsing/unparsing code.