I'm making a multiplayer game using sockets and I have some problems with the server side.The server shall be run from my computer which is behind a router. Therefore I'm a little bit stuck with what should the server inet_addr be. I am using port 1234 and I forwarded it to my PC ( the place where I keep the server ).
I have tried using my own ip address which i got from myipaddress.com, also my computer's router address ( 192.168.0.101 ). The first try i was getting A LOT of connections which ended up in killing the program and in the second try nothing connects to it.
addr.sin_addr.s_addr= inet_addr("192.168.0.101");
addr.sin_port = htons(1234);
addr.sin_family = AF_INET;
What should I do in order to make any client be able to connect to the server and the server to run from behind the router ?
With port forwarding in your router, the router needs to know which device to send packets directed at the selected port range to. The router is asking for your internal IP address, (websites only see your external IP address).
You can find this on Windows by calling ipconfig in cmd (I believe the command may be ifconfig -a on Linux), this lists all of your network interfaces and your internal IP address on any that are connected. You should look for a value in the form 192.168.0.xxx.
When someone then wants to connect to your server if you give them your external IP address and desired port, their packet will be sent to your router on that port, and it will forward it to your computer at the internal IP address.
If you disconnect your computer from the network regularly you may need to configure your internal IP so that it is static and always allocated the same address.
This has nothing to do with your program, and everything to do with your network configuration. Go learn about NAT (network address translation) and doing port forwarding or DMZ on your router.
Usually you want your program to bind to all interfaces - INADDR_ANY - but the important one is the address on the network controlled by your router (often 192.168.0.0/16, but it can be any RFC1918 address block).
Once you have your network configured on your router and binding the external interface from your program (don't hard code an address like in your example, just use INADDR_ANY)
serv_addr.sin_addr.s_addr = inet_addr(INADDR_ANY);
Related
I have written a simple program with Linux (Cent OS 7.0) and C++. It is a very small server which sends back a string of characters to the client. But my problem is that I don't know how should I access that server using an IP address?
I have used Linux Socket Interface (Berkeley), and in the section which defines the address, my code does the following:
serverObject.
sin_family = AF_INET;
serverObject.sin_addr.
s_addr = htonl(INADDR_ANY);
serverObject.
sin_port = htonl(portNumber);
I use INADDR_ANY as my server's address which is defined in its definition as:
/* Address to accept any incoming messages. */
Now, how should I run the server, and then use my simple client program to send request to it. My simple client program accepts an IP address as it's destination address, this address should be the one destined toward to the server. How should I relate it then?
INADDR_ANY goes to specify that all active network interfaces in the system should be bound to. So if you're connected to more than one network, you'll be able to communicate with connections coming in from all of them. Most systems will usually have just one, though, and this still goes to say that if the IP bound to that interface happens to change, you'll still bind to that interface.
So, once you specify INADDR_ANY, you need to initiate connections according to the following rules:
If you're connecting from the same physical machine, the easiest thing would be to use the loopback interface (127.0.0.1). However, you can still do (2).
If you're connecting from another machine, you need to pick the accessible IP address of your server from that machine. As said above, if your server is only connected to one network, this will simply be the IP address of the server. Within an internal network this will often be something like 192.168.x.y, or 10.0.x.y—but it doesn't have to.
If you're connecting from a different network which uses a gateway to access your server, then you will need to set up port forwarding in the relevant routers so that when they receive connection to port X, they will know to internally transfer it to your server.
As a server programmer, you decide the port on which to listen, but not the address.
The internet address is provided by your internet provider, or 127.0.0.1 to test on your own machine.
There are plenty of web pages on internet that provide tools to tell you your current public address (search for What is my Ip).
Most of the "home" internet routers implement NAT: they have a single internet address and map them to many device, that carry the Port number to be changed (your port 80 become port (e.g.) 2345 for outside). To allows a client from outside your home to access your server, you are required to configure your router to map the server port, so for example your public port 80 map to your server port 80.
With that said, you should be able to connect your client to your server through an address and port.
If then you want to use a name (example.org) instead of an IP (93.184.216.34), a Domain Name Server is used. But that is another topic.
I am having troubling using the new bind feature of the QTcpSocket class in Qt5. Any help figuring this out would be appreciated.
I have a multihomed server that contains two NICs each with a separate IP address. I have setup routing on the servers so that sending from the source address is sent out of the appropriate NIC regardless of the target remote address. That is, sending from x.x.x.0 goes out over eth0 and x.x.x.1 goes out over eth1 regardless of who the data is being sent to. These NICs are connected via ethernet to long range Wifi links that are then connected to a switch. These wifi links act as a transparent bridge and can rather be seen as two ethernet cables (but they are limited in bandwidth). The switch is then connected to a computer. The goal is to transfer data between the server and the computer, and to use the two wifi links in parallel to increase bandwidth. Although the server is physically a server, the software has the computer running as the software server (as others connect to it). That is, the physical server (software client) opens TCP sockets and attempts to connect to the listening computer (software server).
I use the bind feature of Qt5 to bind one TCP socket to the eth0 IP address and bind another TCP socket to the eth1 IP address. I have verified this works with other programs like PING or file transfer via SCP. See http://qt-project.org/doc/qt-5.0/qtnetwork/qabstractsocket.html#bind
When I call bind the call succeeds and subsequent requests for the local IP address returns the correct value. E.g. socket->bind(ip) returns true and then socket->localAddress() equals ip. However, when I call connectToHost the localAddress is lost when it starts the connection attempt and after connecting it has a different localAddress that is not the one I wanted it to have.
Can anyone shed light into what is going on? I am trying to avoid rewriting the software to reverse the roles of software client / server as these programs are quite big. Thanks for the help.
There is an open bug on this in the Qt project bug tracker.
I have always used:
serv_addr.sin_addr.s_addr = htonl(INADDR_ANY);
which means that I will accept connections from any interface. If I replace the INADDR_ANY with “192.168.0.1”. Does this mean I will only accept connections from the IP address of 192.168.0.1, or does it mean I will accept connections from the interface of 192.168.0.1 resides on?
I have a situation now where I have multiple clients (each with a unique IP address but same port number), trying to connect to one server. Can I have multiple listens functions (separate threads) listening to a unique IP address and port? Or do I have to accept any connection and get the network information after I've connected?
Edit To give more clarification.
If I say serv_addr.sin_addr.s_addr = inet_addr("192.168.0.1") and a client with IP address 192.168.0.2 tries to connect, will the listen command reject this?
The bind address is the local address to listen on; you can specify the address of a local interface.
If you want to control who can connect, you can either inspect the peer address inside the select/accept loop, or limit inbound connections using iptables.
Update
If I say serv_addr.sin_addr.s_addr = inet_addr("192.168.0.1") and a
client with IP address 192.168.0.2 tries to connect, will the listen
command reject this? I want to be able to have multiple thread, each
servicing a unique IP address.
No, the address is an address on a local machine. Given that you're going for a multi-threaded design, I'd recommend you run the listen/accept code in one thread, check the client address, decide what worker thread is appropriate, and then spawn it.
At the risk of showing my age, I still prefer using listen/accept/select for most socket code - it's a personal taste thing, and yes, does influence the design when it comes to blocking/non-blocking IO, buffering, etc.
If I replace the INADDR_ANY with “192.168.0.1”. Does this mean I will
only accept connections from the IP address of 192.168.0.1, or does it
mean I will accept connections from the interface of 192.168.0.1
resides on?
Yes
I have a situation now where I have multiple clients (each with a
unique IP address but same port number), trying to connect to one
server. Can I have multiple listens functions (separate threads)
listening to a unique IP address and port? Or do I have to accept any
connection and get the network information after I've connected?
Yes. You can "fork" (i.e. create a new thread) for each connection you wish to process, however you'd have to do the filtering yourself. There is no way (that I know off in the API) to offload that work to the stack.
Is it possible to hold an open TCP connection with a client, while the IP address of the client is externally changed?
For example, the connection is establishes against address X, but somewhen while the connection is open, the client-side user asks for IP renew and gets another IP address. Can the connection remains alive in this case?
Thanks in advance.
No, it cannot.
Even if the local side could be massaged to understand that the connection is suddenly between different addresses, the remote side will not understand and will refuse to work with it.
You'd need to re-add the old IP address to continue using the connection.
To do so:
Linux: ip addr add 172.16.10.20/22 dev bond0
Windows: do some pointy-clicky or**fill in command here**
This is possibe with tcp v6 connections, if you're using e.g. tunnelbrocker.net. Every time your IPv4 address changes, the connection between your IP4 address and the tunnelbrocker's IP4 address is dropped then re-established, however your IP6 attress is the same and all the TCP/IPv6 conections from your IP6 address to your destination IP6 addresses are still here.
Or, if you're designinng both your client & server, your could design your protocol allowing the client to reconnect in a transparent way..
What I know is, when using UDP, the connection can be remained, one of my application is to change a remote network adapter address via UDP.
For TCP, I agree with Soonts, you should design your server and client application to allow the reconnect in a transparent way.
I have a C++ Program listening for incoming socket connections on port 2222.
I have an Adobe AIR/Flex application that attempts to connect to it, when I click a button.
When I Connect To My Socket Over My Intranet, My C++ program hears and accepts the incoming socket connection and Everything Works Fine:
var Sock:Socket=new Socket("192.168.1.100",2222);
But When I Try To Connect Using My Real IP, I Get Error #2031:
var Sock:Socket=new Socket("76.18.24.118",2222);
Both programs are running on my laptop computer. I am behind a router, but have configured that router with port forwarding so that port 2222 maps to my laptop.
What Am I Missing? I am very new to this, so perhaps I'm missing something obvious to you smarties.
What does the error code mean (see your docs for socket)
Are you sure the receiving server process is alive?
The traditional starting point is Beej's guide
Port forwarding does not mean that you can use an external IP address, your laptop is still on the private 192.168 network. What it means is that when someone tries to connect on 78.18.24.118:2222 the router converts the IP address to 192.168.1.100:2222. This effectively allows you to run a server inside your network but allows an outside client to connect to you.
Look up DNAT for more information.