Sending and receiving UDP packets?

Question

I have made a program to send an UDP packets from a client to a server.

Here is the transmitter code:

import java.io.IOException;
import java.net.*;
         


        

Answer 1

The receiver must set port of receiver to match port set in sender DatagramPacket. For debugging try listening on port > 1024 (e.g. 8000 or 9000). Ports < 1024 are typically used by system services and need admin access to bind on such a port.

If the receiver sends packet to the hard-coded port it's listening to (e.g. port 57) and the sender is on the same machine then you would create a loopback to the receiver itself. Always use the port specified from the packet and in case of production software would need a check in any case to prevent such a case.

Another reason a packet won't get to destination is the wrong IP address specified in the sender. UDP unlike TCP will attempt to send out a packet even if the address is unreachable and the sender will not receive an error indication. You can check this by printing the address in the receiver as a precaution for debugging.

In the sender you set:

 byte [] IP= { (byte)192, (byte)168, 1, 106 };
 InetAddress address = InetAddress.getByAddress(IP);

but might be simpler to use the address in string form:

 InetAddress address = InetAddress.getByName("192.168.1.106");

In other words, you set target as 192.168.1.106. If this is not the receiver then you won't get the packet.

Here's a simple UDP Receiver that works :

import java.io.IOException;
import java.net.*;

public class Receiver {

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        int port = args.length == 0 ? 57 : Integer.parseInt(args[0]);
        new Receiver().run(port);
    }

    public void run(int port) {    
      try {
        DatagramSocket serverSocket = new DatagramSocket(port);
        byte[] receiveData = new byte[8];
        String sendString = "polo";
        byte[] sendData = sendString.getBytes("UTF-8");

        System.out.printf("Listening on udp:%s:%d%n",
                InetAddress.getLocalHost().getHostAddress(), port);     
        DatagramPacket receivePacket = new DatagramPacket(receiveData,
                           receiveData.length);

        while(true)
        {
              serverSocket.receive(receivePacket);
              String sentence = new String( receivePacket.getData(), 0,
                                 receivePacket.getLength() );
              System.out.println("RECEIVED: " + sentence);
              // now send acknowledgement packet back to sender     
              DatagramPacket sendPacket = new DatagramPacket(sendData, sendData.length,
                   receivePacket.getAddress(), receivePacket.getPort());
              serverSocket.send(sendPacket);
        }
      } catch (IOException e) {
              System.out.println(e);
      }
      // should close serverSocket in finally block
    }
}