Socket programming: How a socket client may discover server IP address inside LAN?

Question

Scope:

• OS: MACOS, Windows;
• Language: C++Boost library;

Description:

LAN has N computers with MacOS and Windows operating systems, where N ≈ 10. The IP addresses of the computer are not static and assigned by the network. On one of these computers (machine S) a socket server application is running. And on another machine (machine C) a client socket application is running. This is not a static setup, and next time it might be different computers with different IP addresses.

Update:

a server machine -- is a slave. A client machine is a master. A user can install client software in any computer in LAN, and server software in any other computer in LAN. Server take responsibility for the calculations which takes a lot of resources and just send a result to a client. So, the main idea is: a user of a master computer should not provide a server IP address, but the client soft should be able to discover it by itself.

Task: Client socket application does not know Server application IP address, and should be able to discover it. Solution should be a cross-platform one (Boost C++)

Please suggest the best practices.

My best guess was: retrieve all the IP addresses of connected devices and socket->send_async_to them. And if I get answer in handle_receive callback -- this is a server app. But I did not find a way how to get all the IP addresses of LAN devices.

Thank you in advance for your suggestions and ideas.

Answer 1

use UDP to send request to all the computers in the network.Write a thread in server to respond udp request. then you can get response from the server and get the socket ip.