I'm developing a system on Xamain in a way that each device can create network service via HttpListner then start listing for incoming calls from other devices on same LAN network. Upon creating the listner we can apply naming convention in the URI so that other devices can filterout non-related services.
The question is there a way to discover all hosts (ip+port) under same LAN having given service's prefix?
I could do it using device specific code for Android via NdsManager class then calling DiscoveringPeers() but I'm thinking why it's not possible to have equivalent functionality in .Net?
I used ZeroConf as source of inspiration to implement Multicasting clients and now all good. The most important is picking up the right Ip address adapted to your Network to multicast. See this table (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multicast_address).
Broadcasting to 255.255.255.255 was not the required behavior as well as it will not be routed.
I am working on some legacy code on Windows for a desktop app in "C.
The client needs to know the geo-location of the user who is running the application.
I have the geo-location code all working (using MaxMind: http://dev.maxmind.com/).
But now I'm looking for help in getting their external IP.
From all the discussions on this topic throughout SO and elsewhere it seems that there is a way to do this by connecting to a "reliable" host (server) and then doing some kind of lookup. I'm not too savvy on WinSock but this is the technology that may be the simplest to use.
Another option is to use WinHttpConnect technology.
Both have "C" interfaces.
Thank you for your support and suggestions.
You can write a simple web service that checks the IP address(es) that the program presents when connecting to that web service.
Look at http://whatismyip.com for an example.
Note that multiple addresses can be presented by the HTTP protocol if there are proxy servers along the route.
You can design your simple web service to get the IP of the client. See
How do I get the caller's IP address in a WebMethod?
and then return that address back to the caller.
Note that in about 15% of cases (my experience metric) the geo location will be way off. The classic example is that most AOL users are routed through a small number of proxy servers. However, there are many other cases where the public IP does not match the user's actual location. Additionally, Geo IP databases are sometimes just wrong.
Edit
It is not possible to detect your external IP address using only in-browser code.
The WebSocket has no provision to expose your external IP address.
https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc6455
You need an outside server to tell you what IP it sees.
I wrote a tool running on a system (Win7) with two network interfaces, each linked to a different subnet, each with its own gateway which is then linked to two separate distant networks (there are outgoing firewalls after each gateway). I’m initiating outgoing TCP connections via both NICs by using Socket.Bind (before doing Connect) to each relevant NIC’s IP address. First NIC is working fine, but for the second NIC, I’m getting SocketException: “A socket operation was attempted to an unreachable network”.
My original understanding was that since sockets are bound to concrete NIC’s local endpoint, which has its gateway defined, the connection should be routed to this gateway and therefore should work. However, it seems that source IP address is ignored and the routing is working according to local routing table (i.e. second NIC’s connect request goes to first, default, network and being rejected because it has wrong subnet).
Adjusting local routing tables helps, but it makes me wonder about the whole reasoning behind ability of the socket to bind to specific local IP.
Doing some extra reading, I found out that, indeed, there’s such thing as “source IP routing”, but it is disabled in Windows by default (via DisableIPSourceRouting registry setting), due to security reasons, as described, e.g. here:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff648853.aspx
http://www.bloggersbase.com/disableipsourcerouting/
Questions:
If my original understanding was correct (i.e. Socket.Bind should be enough) – why it is not working without modifying routing tables?
If my understand was NOT correct (i.e. Socket.Bind is ignored and routing is used) – what’s the point of having Socket.Bind? Why doing it at all?
Also, I’d like to understand better, what is the actual risk of having source IP routing enabled (preferably with example of a possible exploit)?
Any ideas of solving the requirement without manually modifying local routing table will be greatly appreciated.
Many thanks.
OK, after some reading, here are some high-level explanations on what's happening. I still need to verify the below conclusions in my system. Apparently, local binding is typically ignored when selecting network interface. Instead, routing table is used for this. However, in Strong Host Model (default for Vista and newer, non-existant in XP), source IP is used as a 'constraint' in the routing table lookup.
Brief explanation about strong host model vs. weak host model:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/2007.09.cableguy.aspx
Explanation on what's different in XP vs newer Windows versions in respect to the above:
http://blogs.technet.com/b/networking/archive/2009/04/24/source-ip-address-selection-on-a-multi-homed-windows-computer.aspx
On a win32 multiple nic computer, how to force DNS resolving through gethostbyname() on a specific nic if all nics have different DNS configured and have the same metric ?
Otherwise, how to know which DNS will be used to resolve names each time a gethostbyname() call will be performed by the application ?
You can't do this, at least I'm fairly certain you can't specify an interface to send out the queries from using gethostbyname() or any of the standard socket utilities. (There might be a very esoteric win32 option for this, but I'm betting against it)
If you absolutely need this functionality, you'll need to pick a third party DNS library that provides you with such an ability ... or even write one from scatch.
The library will need to provide you with a means of binding the UDP socket that will be issuing the DNS queries to a specified address.
There also might be a way of configuring Windows to issue DNS queries from an interface using system settings, but I strongly doubt there is a means of doing this from within a program.
That might be better answered at https://serverfault.com/ It's a site geared more toward administering a machine. SO is best for programming.
Consider to use raw sockets and implement your own DNS query mechanism.
Consider the following setup:
A windows PC with a LAN interface and a WiFi interface (the standard for any new laptop). Each of the interfaces might be connected or disconnected from a network. I need a way to determine which one of the adapters is the one connected to the internet - specifically, in case they are both connected to different networks, one with connection to the internet and one without.
My current solution involves using IPHelper's "GetBestInterface" function and supplying it with the IP address "0.0.0.0".
Do you have any other solutions you might suggest to this problem?
Following some of the answers, let me elaborate:
I need this because I have a product that has to choose which adapter to bind to. I have no way of controlling the setup of the network or the host where the product will run and so I need a solution that is as robust as possible, with as few assumptions as possible.
I need to do this in code, since this is part of a product.
#Chris Upchurch: This makes me dependent on google.com being up (usually not a problem) and on any personal firewall that might be installed to allow pinging.
#Till: Like Steve Moon said, relying on the adapter's address is kind of risky because you make a lot of assumptions on the internal network setup.
#Steve Moon: Looking at the routing table sounds like a good idea, but instead of applying the routing logic myself, I am trying to use "GetBestInterface" as described above. I believe what it should do is exactly what you outlined in your answer, but I am not really sure. The reason I'm reluctant to implement my own "routing logic" is that there's a better chance that I'll get it wrong than if I use a library/API written and tested by more "hard-core" network people.
Technically, there is no "connected to the Internet". The real question is, which interface is routeable to a desired address. Right now, you're querying for the "default route" - the one that applies if no specific route to destination exists. But, you're ignoring any specific routes.
Fortunately, for 99.9% of home users, that'll do the trick. They're not likely to have much of a routing table, and GetBestInterface will automatically prefer wired over wireless - so you should be good. Throw in an override option for the .1% of cases you screw up, and call it a day.
But, for corporate use, you should be using GetBestInterface for a specific destination - otherwise, you'll have issues if someone is on the same LAN as your destination (which means you should take the "internal" interface, not the "external") or has a specific route to your destination (my internal network could peer with your destination's network, for instance).
Then again, I'm not sure what you plan to do with this adapter "connected to the Internet", so it might not be a big deal.
Apparently, in Vista there are new interfaces that enable querying for internet connectivity and more. Take a look at the NLM Interfaces and specifically at INetworkConnection - you can specifically query if the network connection has internet connectivity using the GetConnectivity method.
See also: Network Awareness on Windows Vista
Unfortunately, this is only available on Vista, so for XP I'd have to keep my original heuristic.
I'd look at the routing table. Whichever NIC has an 0.0.0.0 route AND is enabled AND has the lowest metric, is the nic that's currently sending packets to the internet.
So in my case, the top one is the 'internet nic'.
IPv4 Route Table
===========================================================================
Active Routes:
Network Destination Netmask Gateway Interface Metric
0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 10.0.0.10 10.0.0.51 20
0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 10.0.0.10 10.0.0.50 25
(much other stuff deleted)
Another alternative is to ping or GetBestInterface 4.2.2.2 - this is an old and venerable DNS server, currently held by GTEI; formerly by Sprint if I remember right.
Start > Run > cmd.exe (this works in XP and Vista): ipconfig /all
This displays all info about the interfaces in your computer. The "public" facing interface should have a public IP address. For starters, it should not be 192.168.x.x or 10.x.x.x :)
running traceroute to some public site will show you. Of course, there may be more than one interface that would get you there.
Look at the routing table? Generally, unless you're routing between the networks in windows (which is possible, but unusual for a client computer these days) the interface that holds the default route is going to have the Internet connection.
Your question didn't detail why or what you're doing this with so I can't provide any specifics. The command line tool "route" may be of some help, but there are probably libraries for whatever programming language you're using to look at the routing table.
You can't rely on the IP address of the interface (e.g., assuming an RFC-1918 address [192.168.0.0/16, 172.16.0.0/12, 10.0.0.0/8] isn't the internet) since most sites have some kind of NATed firewall or proxy setup and the "internet" interface is really on a "private" lan that gets you out to the Internet.
UPDATE: Based on your further information, it sounds like you have a decent solution. I'm not so sure about the choice of 0.0.0.0 since that's a boundary case for IP address -- might be OK on your particular mix of platform/language. Sounds (from the API description) like you could just specify an address, so why not some address known to be on the Internet, e.g. the IP address of your web site, or something more random like 65.66.67.68? Just make sure not to pick one of the rfc-1918 addresses, or the localhost range (127.0.0.0/8), or multicast, any other reserved range, and any address that resolves to a .mil or .gov (while it doesn't sound like getbestinterface sends any traffic, it would suck to find out by having the feds break your door down... :)
Looking at the network point of view, either could be routing to the "internet" at any time. If things like spanning tree protocol are enabled on a switch then you may find that what may have been the routing card to begin with may not be anymore.
Ping google.com though each NIC.