I want to develop network application (servers-clients) with some process:
server creating instance on specific port and sending to other client in network information about existance (can be invitation message);
clients are checking about existing servers in LAN network on specific port. Choose which one to connect and do other actions.
I tried ServerSocket and Socket and I know how to connect one server to one client. But to do procedures described above I need to do something like broadcating. Which method should I use and try? Is MulticastServer good for that one?
Thanks for help.
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The problem: In java you can create a socket on the server with ServerSocket(0) and it will choose a random port to listen on. However when you create a socket on the client to send a message with Socket(addr, port) there is no apparent way to determine which port on the server you need to send to. I couldn't find anything about this option through web searches besides the basic "if you put 0 it will chose a random port". Does anyone know or have a resource that could explain what this scenario is supposed to look like from the client end?
Some background: I am currently converting a system from UDP to TCP. The reason I need the server to listen on a random port is that my server/client do not have a strict server/client relationship. So the "server" in this situation is really an application that I need to open multiple instances of on one PC. The old way of having predetermined send/receive ports is causing only one instance to be able to open a port and all communication is being redirected to that instance. My understanding that the best way to fix this problem is for each instance to use a different port, and the best way for that is to do ServerSocket(0). Despite including this background, I do not want comments on how messed up the situation is, only answers pertaining to the problem.
If a fixed port number is not part of the server's documented setup / protocol, then the only way for clients to figure out is to have the running/active servers publish that information in some datastore, the location and details of which are documented and known by the clients, and where that datastore is reachable for the clients.
[Or have the clients run a portscan each time they want to connect. It will work but probably not as fast as your users would like.]
And your situation is indeed messed up.
Perhaps if you are on the same IP subnet with all the servers/clients, then you could use UPnP to signal which random port new instances of your application are running on, and similarly other instances could monitor UPnP to discover this new instance.
I've never implemented UPnP in Java, but suspect libraries are out there..
eg. https://github.com/jupnp/jupnp
I'm working on a server-client project. I hosted server on Google app engine so there is no problem with IP there, all the clients can connect to the server easily. Yet the problem occurs when I try to connect to a client, which is quite complex because I don't have static IP for the clients. Can anyone suggest me a good way for server-client coomucication in this case, without requiring that clients must have static IP address?
Thank you very much.
Well, obviously the client should register itself with the server and update it's IP when it changes.
There is, for example, a program which does exactly that and then publishes the IP with a DNS.
But you should be aware that the IPv4 address space is not that big and a lot of internet clients do not own an IP (and work thru the ISP's NAT). If you have clients that do not own an IP then you might want to stick to the usual Pull: the clients should periodically issue a request to the server to check if there are new messages for them. With a Keep-Alive connection and an efficient server implementation the price of such checks might actually be low, although that kind of communication might not work very well with the GAE pricing.
Using sockets in java, is it possible to send information at the same time as connecting?
For example I want a remote device to control another device (such as a virtual appliance) using 'Client Server'. So the remote will switch the appliance on. When I connect to the Server I would like to allow the server to be able to determine what type of device it is, either a remote or appliance without sending a messages after connecting.
Is this possible? Or would there be a better way to implement this?
Thanks
You could set up different ports on the server, and have different kinds of devices connect to different ports. That way, the port number of the incoming connection would identify the device before the first byte of payload data has been transferred.
I have a spreadsheet application in Java, and one of the features it provides (which I developed) is sheet sharing. Basically, anyone can be a client or a server because the app has both server and client code. The user who is the server creates the share, specifies the IP, and then the share is created and active (best case scenario) with the server listening for clients on its IP and selected port.
At the moment, the client needs to enter the IP and port of the server that's listening in order to connect. The server then creates a new socket for that client and communicates with in on a separate thread, while the server continues listening on another (traditional TCP behavior). This is all working fine.
What I need to develop is auto-discovery, e.g. a client does not need to type in an IP or port, they simply select 'Join a share...' from the menu and then it starts looking for servers. When one is found, it should send its list of active shares on that IP. The user then selects which share to join from the list, and is connected.
However, I have doubts on how to tackle this issue. Should I use broadcast to poll servers, like DHCP does? Or is there an easier way?
What I'd like to implement is:
Client -> polls local network -> finds a server -> server sends active share list to client -> client selects share to join -> connected!
Technically, what you're looking for is active servers that are running your spreadsheet application.
One possibility would be for your server code to send out an "alive" message to the network every so often (say every 15 seconds). Your client code would listen for these "alive" messages, and produce a meaningful list of spreadsheet servers.
Another possibility would to to use the same database engine that you're using to store the spreadsheets to store the IP and port of the connected server code. The client code would just read the database table to get the connections.
I have something like a proxy server (written in java) running between my clients and the actual video server (made in c++). Everything the clients send goes through this proxy and is then redirected to the server.
It is working fine, but I have some issues and think it would be better if I could make this proxy server only to listen to the clients requests and then somehow tell the server that a request has been made from the client side, and that it is supposed to create a connection with the client directly.
Basically in the TCP level what I want to happen is something like this:
1- whenever a client sends a SYN to my proxy, the proxy just sends a message to the real server telling the ip and port of the client.
2- The server would then send the corresponding SYN-ACK to the specified client creating a direct connection between client and server.
The proxy would then be just relaying the initial requests (but not the later data transfer) to the actual server. I just don't know if that is possible.
Thank you very much
Nelson R. Perez
That's very much the way some games (and Fog Creek CoPilot) do it, but it requires support on both the server and the client. Basically the proxy has to say to the client and server "try communicating with the directly on this ip and this port" and if they can't get through (because one or both is behind a NAT or firewall), they fall back to going through the proxy.
I found this good description of "peer to peer tcp hole punching" at http://www.brynosaurus.com/pub/net/p2pnat/
Does the proxy and server lives on the same machine? If so, you can pass the connection to the server using Socket Transfer or File Descriptor Passing. You can find examples in C here,
http://www.wsinnovations.com/softeng/articles/uds.html
If they are on the different machines, there is no way to pass connection to the server. However, it's possible to proxy the IP packets to server using VIP (Virtual IP). This is below socket so you have to use Link layer interface, like DLPI.
You don't have control of TCP handshake in userland like that. This is what firewalls/routers do but it all happens in the kernel. Take a look at the firewalling software for your platform - you might not even have to code anything.