OpenEuphoria

Re: To Ray Smith/ Client-Server

• Posted by Ray & Debbie Smith <smithr at IX.NET.AU> Dec 14, 2000
• 457 views

Hi Luis,

> Sorry for this post, but I've lost Ray's email address.

It's in the readme.txt that comes with euLibnet (smithr at ix.net.au).

> You say that the  Libnet is a very portable library...
> are you working on a port fot Unix/Linux systems? I'm actually trying to
> compile the
> C source of Libnet under linux with the gcc compiler...if I succeed,let
> me know and I'll send you the "libnet.so" I you need it.

I haven't looked at a Linux port, if you do succeed in making a libnet.so
let me know, and also let me know how you did it as I would like
to do the same thing with euAllegro.
I would have thought it would use the "--shared" option as this is what
is/has been discussed on the Mingw mailing list the last month or so.

Also note I created my own C DLL that gives a common interface to
the Euphoria include.  I actually didn't need to do this but I orginally
had euLibnet bundled in with euAllegro, so when it pulled it out
onto it's own I just left the wrapper C DLL functions there.

My Linux PC is out of action at the moment until I get my monitor back,
which at this stage doesn't look like it will be until after xmas.

> -- Questions:
> It's possible to open several ports at the same time?(one for
> listening,another one for transmit...)  it would speed up the server?

Yes, this is what chat_server.exw does.  There is *always* a port opened for
listening and as each client connects it creates a port for communicating
with that client.

> If the client doesn't knows the port of the server, it would be possible
> to create a routine on the client (like a port scanner/sniffer) so that
> he can find the correct listening port in the server? Even more, if the
> client doesn't knows the port and the IP
> of the server, it would be possible to program the server so it
> transmits a kind of signal to the www so that anyone from the net with
> the client,can connect to?

At this stage the clients need to know the IP and port of the server.
To make matters worse the server can't auto-detect it's IP address properly.
I have added support a couple of days ago for the server to autodetect
the IP/Port address of the client when it connects.  So the server won't
need
to know any client IP's.

I have also added all the Channel functions to euLibnet as my initial
research
on LAN/Network games indicate that this is the common approach to take.
Even though Channels are less stable, the extra speed seems to be worth
the extra code to check for valid messages.

There is a guy here in Australia (Peter Wang ... I think) who has created
what he calls a MetaServer for Libnet that will allow anyone with a Libnet
server on the net to post the IP and port number of their server onto this
Metaserver. This allows a central place to find IP/Port addresses.
He has created the program but at this stage I don't beleive anyone has a
copy
of Metaserver running on the net. (I'm sure if you have a server and an
IP/Port
he'd welcome you to use it).
The Libnet people (George Foot in particular I beleive) are working on
improving the IP configurartion routines but I don't really know the
exact plans.

I have been a bit sick the last couple of days otherwise I would have
finished
the changes to euLibnet and uploaded them to my Webpage.

I should have this done over the weekend sometime. (or maybe sooner)

> thanks & regards,
> Luis

Thanks for the interest Luis,

Ray Smith