Network UDP broadcast design?

Question

I am working on a C++ server/.NET client applications couple in which my server (which runs the c++ on linux) broadcasts a message to show it\'s alive to the whole network and m

Answer 1

If your .NET program listens for broadcast traffic, it will receive any and all broadcast traffic on the network sent on that port, including traffic not sent by your server. You could put a "marker" in the payload of the broadcast messages sent by your server. This way, your .NET program could distinguish which ones it cares about.

Beyond that, I would recommend using multicast instead of broadcast. Broadcast traffic is usually restricted to hosts on the same subnet. In layman's terms, if you have a router in your network, a host on side A of the router will not see broadcast traffic sent by a host on side B (and vice versa) because the router "blocks" it. Routers will almost always forward multicast traffic if a host has joined the multicast group.