How to broadcast Message using UDP sockets locally?

Question

I want to broadcast messages locally to many application. For that I thought UDP sockets is the best IPC, correct me if I am worng.

For this I am using the following codes:

For broadcast:

/*
** broadcaster.c -- a datagram "client" that can broadcast
*/

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <unistd.h>
#include <errno.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <sys/types.h>
#include <sys/socket.h>
#include <netinet/in.h>
#include <arpa/inet.h>
#include <netdb.h>

#define SERVERPORT 4950    // the port users will be connecting to

int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
    int sockfd;
    struct sockaddr_in their_addr; // connector's address information
    struct hostent *he;
    int numbytes;
    int broadcast = 1;
    //char broadcast = '1'; // if that doesn't work, try this

    if (argc != 3) {
        fprintf(stderr,"usage: broadcaster hostname message\n");
        exit(1);
    }

    if ((he=gethostbyname(argv[1])) == NULL) {  // get the host info
        perror("gethostbyname");
        exit(1);
    }

    if ((sockfd = socket(AF_UNIX, SOCK_DGRAM, 0)) == -1) {
        perror("socket");
        exit(1);
    }

    // this call is what allows broadcast packets to be sent:
    if (setsockopt(sockfd, SOL_SOCKET, SO_BROADCAST, &broadcast,
        sizeof broadcast) == -1) {
        perror("setsockopt (SO_BROADCAST)");
        exit(1);
    }

    their_addr.sin_family = AF_UNIX;     // host byte order
    their_addr.sin_port = htons(SERVERPORT); // short, network byte order
    their_addr.sin_addr = *((struct in_addr *)he->h_addr);
    memset(their_addr.sin_zero, '\0', sizeof their_addr.sin_zero);

    if ((numbytes=sendto(sockfd, argv[2], strlen(argv[2]), 0,
             (struct sockaddr *)&their_addr, sizeof their_addr)) == -1) {
        perror("sendto");
        exit(1);
    }

    printf("sent %d bytes to %s\n", numbytes,
        inet_ntoa(their_addr.sin_addr));

    close(sockfd);

    return 0;
}

And to listen :

/*
** listener.c -- a datagram sockets "server" demo
*/

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <unistd.h>
#include <errno.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <sys/types.h>
#include <sys/socket.h>
#include <netinet/in.h>
#include <arpa/inet.h>
#include <netdb.h>

#define MYPORT "4950"    // the port users will be connecting to

#define MAXBUFLEN 100

// get sockaddr, IPv4 or IPv6:
void *get_in_addr(struct sockaddr *sa)
{
    if (sa->sa_family == AF_INET) {
        return &(((struct sockaddr_in*)sa)->sin_addr);
    }

    return &(((struct sockaddr_in6*)sa)->sin6_addr);
}

int main(void)
{
    int sockfd;
    struct addrinfo hints, *servinfo, *p;
    int rv;
    int numbytes;
    struct sockaddr_storage their_addr;
    char buf[MAXBUFLEN];
    socklen_t addr_len;
    char s[INET6_ADDRSTRLEN];
    int optval = 1;

    memset(&hints, 0, sizeof hints);
    hints.ai_family = AF_UNSPEC; // set to AF_INET to force IPv4
    hints.ai_socktype = SOCK_DGRAM;
    hints.ai_flags = AI_PASSIVE; // use my IP

    if ((rv = getaddrinfo(NULL, MYPORT, &hints, &servinfo)) != 0) {
        fprintf(stderr, "getaddrinfo: %s\n", gai_strerror(rv));
        return 1;
    }

    // loop through all the results and bind to the first we can
    for(p = servinfo; p != NULL; p = p->ai_next) {
        if ((sockfd = socket(p->ai_family, p->ai_socktype,
                p->ai_protocol)) == -1) {
            perror("listener: socket");
            continue;
        }

        if(setsockopt(sockfd, SOL_SOCKET,SO_REUSEADDR, &optval, sizeof optval) != 0)
        {
            perror("listener: setsockopt");
            continue;   
        }   

        if (bind(sockfd, p->ai_addr, p->ai_addrlen) == -1) {
            close(sockfd);
            perror("listener: bind");
            continue;
        }

        break;
    }

    if (p == NULL) {
        fprintf(stderr, "listener: failed to bind socket\n");
        return 2;
    }

    freeaddrinfo(servinfo);

    printf("listener: waiting to recvfrom...\n");

    addr_len = sizeof their_addr;
    if ((numbytes = recvfrom(sockfd, buf, MAXBUFLEN-1 , 0,
        (struct sockaddr *)&their_addr, &addr_len)) == -1) {
        perror("recvfrom");
        exit(1);
    }

    printf("listener: got packet from %s\n",
        inet_ntop(their_addr.ss_family,
            get_in_addr((struct sockaddr *)&their_addr),
            s, sizeof s));
    printf("listener: packet is %d bytes long\n", numbytes);
    buf[numbytes] = '\0';
    printf("listener: packet contains \"%s\"\n", buf);

    close(sockfd);

    return 0;
}

The problem is that I have to pass IP like this 192.168.1.255 but in the real scenario there may not be eth0 interface, there will be only loopback. Then how can I achieve this?

Answer 1

While the original question doesn't explicitly say so, I believe the original asker wanted to 'broadcast' to multiple applications running on the same operating-system instance (same computer to old timers).

This is supported by the use of 'SO_REUSEADDR' in the listener example, and followup comments by Yuvi, and finally a suggestion to use IP multicast.

The original question should be clarified.

I believe packet distribution with multiple-binders on a single UDP port varies between operating systems when using SO_REUSEADDR. My experience on recent Windows, is that a single 'binder' is exclusively given all packets until she releases her bind, at which time, another binder is chosen and presented all received packets, until she releases, and so on...

This apparently differs from recent Linux kernels, as explained in this link: https://stackoverflow.com/a/14388707/86375 That page appears to claim Linux will round-robin receives packets between multiple binders.

The end-result, if you hope to send-to-many using a single sent-datagrams as the original poster did, and you attempt to use IP unicast, not IP multicast, you may be disappointed. (My experience, and the link above show you can multi-bind, but that doesn't imply multi-delivery of received datagrams, neither on Linux or Windows)

The original poster should have tried using multicast.

Answer 2

The server should not be bound to an address you get from getaddrinfo, instead it should be bound to 127.255.255.255 (for the loopback interface).

For a ready-made example of broadcast server/client see http://www.ccplusplus.com/2011/09/udp-broadcast-client-server-example.html