Trying to get InetAddress.getLocalHost.getHostAddress (Java/Scala) to return external IP

Question

So I'm having a problem with using InetAddress.getLocalHost.getHostAddress to get the external IP address of a given machine.

I'm actually doing this in Scala in a sense - the configuration file for Akka Remote Actors default uses InetAddress.getLocalHost.getHostAddress to get the IP address of the machine, which is what I want since I will be deploying the actors on several machines. However, it seems to be returning 127.0.0.1 instead of the external IP address I want (since the remote actors need to communicate back and forth across the netwrok).

The problem is that I can't use any of the methods I've found on Google to circumvent this since they all seem to involve adjusting the code itself, whereas here I don't really have any code to adjust, the DSL just automatically uses InetAddress.getLocalHost.getHostAddress.

I've read on a few threads from a Google search that you can circumvent this by editing your host file or something? How do I do this?

Thanks! -kstruct

Answer 1

You may want to use NetworkInterface class.

In particular, use static getNetworkInterfaces method to enumerate all available network interfaces.