Broadcasting for Server Availability

[gharabed]

I was wondering if somebody could provide some suggestions on how to do the networking programming for the following...I want to write a server application and have multiple clients that send data to that server. The catch is that I don't want the clients to have to be configured to talk to a specific server. I want the server to broadcast some sort of beacon packet that the clients would recognize and once received and some handshaking has taken place, would then start sending data to that server. Is there a way to do something like this in vb.net?

Let me clarify by giving an example. It's a ridiculous one but I'm just trying to make a point. Say I have an application where data entry people are sitting at their computers and entering some sort of information into my application. I want to have a server application running on say my desktop that identifies itself as "the server" where the clients should send their data. Now I want to be able to move the "server app" running my desktop to say my laptop without re-configuring the clients. All I would need to do is shut the server app down on my desktop and start it on my laptop. I don't have a problem with configuring the clients and server to assign some arbitrary identifying value like "ServerID.123" or something along those lines. I just don't want to put a hostname or ip address on the clients.

If the server is not running then no data is sent from the clients and the data is just buffered locally until the server is up and running. If the server is running then the clients sync up with the server and start sending data.

Is this sort of broadcasting and network communication something that is possible to write in VB? I could use sockets to do the communication once the clients and server are all identified, but I'm not clear on how I would do the initial broadcasting and hand shaking.

Any help/input on this is appreciated.

Thanks,
Greg

 

[MangroBongacello]

I don't know if that fits into your concept but maybe you can set up a "info" server that will always run on the same location. To this server your server will send information about itself and the clients would ask for this information. So, when your server starts, it will send info to the info server like "i'm running on ip xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx, port xxxx." The clients will periodically check for that info and will try to connect to provided address.

 

[nickd87]

If the network supports broadcasting, you could send out broadcast UDP packets, and have your clients monitor for them. They could then use that data to connect to the server, wherever it is.

http://www.knowdotnet.com/articles/udpbroadcastmessage.html