I am writing a server application that accepts TCP connections from different programs/protocols but I need to pass additional information to my server. I was thinking of passing this information through the subdomain being used. In other words, when connecting to my server, using an address such as somedata.example.com where somedata will be the extra information I need and my DNS will point *.example.com to my server. Would it be possible to fetch the domain/subdomain that the client used to connect to my server?
Code samples are welcome and in Go would be even better.
Thank you.
A TCP connection is conceptually just a stream of bytes in each direction. There is no single way that a hostname with subdomain would be communicated. Most protocols have their own way of communicating that if they need it. Examples:
An http request has a HOST header.
When initiating a tls connection, the handshake usually includes the desired host name.
If you are using some standard protocol, you should use their built-in metadata facilities.
If you are building your own custom binary protocol (I wouldn't if I could avoid it), you may consider adding some header info in some format. Perhaps a standardized header of length|desired-service-name|other-data would be sufficient. If the client sends something like that at the start of a new connection, the server can read it, and dispatch the connection appropriately.
Related
I understand why a server would need sockets for incoming data, but I do not understand why it is necessary that a socket connecting to another computer needs a source port.
While others have mentioned the exact reason why, let me illustrate the point by giving you an example:
Say you want to ssh to your server. OK, you ssh in and do some stuff. Then you tail a log file. So now you don't have access to the console anymore. No problem you think, I'll ssh again...
With one port number, if you ssh again that second connection will be a mirror of the first since the server won't know that there are two connections (no source port number to tell the difference) so you're out of luck.
With two port numbers you can ssh a second time to get a second console.
Say you browse a website, say Stackoverflow. You're reading a question but you think you've seen it before. You open a new tab in your browser to stackoverflow to do a search.
With only one port number the server have no way of knowing which packet belongs to which socket on the client so opening a second page will not be possible (or worse, both pages receive mixed data from each other).
With two port numbers the server will see two different connections from the client and send the correct data to the correct tab.
So you need two port numbers for client to tell what data is coming from what server and for the server to tell what data is coming from which socket from the client.
A TCP connection is defined in terms of the source and destination IP addresses and port numbers.
Otherwise for example you could never distinguish between two connections to the same server from the same client host.
Check out this link:
http://compnetworking.about.com/od/basiccomputerarchitecture/g/computer-ports.htm
Ultimately, they allow different applications and services to share the same networking resources. For example, your browser probably uses port 80, but your email application may use port 25.
TCP communication is two-way. A segment being sent from the server, even if it is in response to a segment from the client, is an incoming segment as seen from the client. If a client opens multiple connections to the same port on the server (such as when you load multiple StackOverflow pages at once), both the server and the client need to be able to tell the TCP segments from the different connections apart; this is done by looking at the combination of source port and destination port.
I have a client and a server application that is communicating just fine, there is a TIdCmdTCPServer in the server and a TIdTCPClient in the client.
The client has to authenticate in the server, the client asks the server for the newest version information and downloads any updates, and other communications. All this communication with TIdTCPClient.SendCmd() and TIdTCPClient.LastCmdResult.Text.Text.
The way it is, the server receives commands and replies, the clients only receives replies, never commands, and I would like to implement a way to make the client receives commands. But as I heard, if the client uses SendCmd it should never be listening for data like ReadLn() as it would interfere with the reply expected in SendCmd.
I thought of making a command to check for commands, for example, the client would send a command like "IsThereCommandForMe" and the server would have a pool of commands to each client and when the client asks, the server send it in the reply, but I think it would not be a good approach as there would be a big delay between the commands being available and the client asking for it. I also thought of making a new connection with new components, for example a TIdCmdTcpClient, but then there would be 2 connections for each client, I don't like that idea as I think it could easily give problems in the communication.
The reason I want this, is that I want to implement a chat functionality in the client, and it should be receiving messages from the server without asking for it all the time, imagine all clients continually asking the server if there is message for them. And I would like to be able to inform the client when there is an update available instead the client being asking if there is any. And with this I could send more commands to the client too.
what are your thoughts about this ? how can I make the server receiving commands from the clients, but also sends them ?
TCP sockets are bidirectional by design. Once the connection between 'client' and 'server' has been established, they are symmetric and data can be sent at any time from any side over the same socket.
It only depends on the protocol (which is just written 'contract' for the communication) which communication model is used. HTTP for example uses a request/reply model. With Telnet for example, both sides can initate data transmissions. (If you take a look at the Indy implementation for Telnet, you will see that it uses a background thread to listen for server data, but it uses the same socket connection in the main thread to send data from client to server).
A "full duplex" protocol which supports both request/response and server push, and also is firewall-friendly, is WebSockets. With WebSockets (a HTTP upgrade), the server can send data to the connected client(s) any time. This would meet your 'chat' requirement.
If you use TIdTCPClient / TIdCmdTCPServer, corporate firewalls might block the communication.
The challenge: We have a number of clients in distributed outposts that I have to manage with a central server. As some clients are located in DMZ or behind proxies, they should be connecting to the server!
As I only have to deal with one client at a time, the server doesn't necessarily have to be able to handle multiple clients simultaniously, however, I would like to see a list of the clients that are trying to connect to the server. Plus, I would like to see more information about the clients than just the IP address, for example the geographic location and some information, if the client has some files in a specific directory that the central server is interested in. My question is, how I best do smth like that.
Sure, I could simply show every client trying to connect in a listbox and accept only the one that I want to connect with, but is that really the way to go? I doubt I can get more information about the client than it's IP address?
I was wondering, if this calls for UDP. The clients send UDP datagrams that just inform the server that they are alive and that they want to connect. On the server, I see all these clients listed with the data they sent. I can then select one client, send an answer/"connection request" with UDP so that this particular client will connect via TCP to the server?
Is that possible?
This sounds like using a hammer to crack a nut. Just have them all connect via TCP. Then you get their presence, their IP address, anything else they care to send you. Deal with them all at once. It's not hard.
I am trying to write a programme that will 'listen' to application that is running on a port over TCP/IP.
When I point my browser to localhost:30003 , I get the output stream from the application printed to the screen. It would appear that the browser successfully 'listens' to the port.
What is happening here? Is my browser polling the application or is the application pushing tcp data which the browser picks up?
I am not sure whether to get this data I need to create a client or server instance.
One of the best ways to find out what is actually happening is to fire up Wireshark and follow the tcp stream.
http://www.wireshark.org/
Alternately, you can use something like TCP mon if you only care about the text, and none of the networking details.
http://ws.apache.org/commons/tcpmon/download.cgi
Based on the limited information in your question, the most likely thing is that the browser makes the tcp connection, and you send back a malformed response. The brower assumes you are a broken site, and does it's best to adjust. If you aren't sending the correct http header, it dosn't know what else to do so it probably just puts the text on the screen.
Best way to know the details is with wireshark or tcpmon
Pointing the browser to localhost:30003 will cause it the open the connection to port 30003 on the localhost and sent the string "GET /" to request a web page from what is thinks is a web host. Whatever text is sent by your app upon receiving a connection is simply displayed by the web browser as if it had received the contents of a text file on a web server.
when you write "localhost:30003" in your browser a connection is established to some program that listens to the port 30003 on your computer. The prefix in the URL, (default HTTP) determines the protocol used by server and client, in this case the browser is the client connecting to your PC, the server.
If you want to do the same with your program you can set up a socket connection to your localhost using the same port 30003. Your program then becomes the client. Depending on the program (which you don't mention anything about) you may have more protocol options and would need to handle the protocol in your program.
An alternative is to use telnet to connect to your program but it depends on available protocols.
I'm in the process of trying to write a chat application and I have a few issues
that I trying to work out. The application is basically a chat application that works on a Lan. One client acts as the
host and other clients can connect to the host and publicly chat among themselves. I want also the option of a client starting
a private chat with an already connected client. So what is the best way for this to happen. For example should the request message (which
contains the ip address of client) route through the host and then if the requested client wants to connect , then they initiate the connection
using ip of the requesting client. Should this also be on a separate port number. Does it matter if your application uses a number of ports.
Or, when ever a client connects to a host, the host should send them a list of users with there ip addresses, and then the client can
attempt a connection with the other client for a private chat.
Hope this all makes sense. Any help would be appreciated
Thanks
If you are just interested in a quick-and-dirty chat facility that only needs to work over a LAN, I'd suggest having all clients send and receive broadcast UDP packets on a single well-known port number. Then no server is necessary at all, and thus no discovery is necessary either, and things are a lot simpler.
If you really want to go the client-server route, though, you should have your server (aka host) machine accept TCP connections on a single well-known port, and then have it use select() or poll() to multiplex the incoming TCP connections and forward any data that comes in from each incoming TCP socket to all of the others sockets. Clients can connect via TCP to the server at this well-known port, but the clients will have to have some way of knowing what IP address to connect to... either from having the user type in the IP address of the server, or by some discovery mechanism (broadcast UDP packets could be used to implement that). This way is a lot more work though.
I'm all for creating my own but depending on time constraints sometimes I look for alternatives like this I used it in a company I worked at before. It's really good. But if you decide to make your own you first have to map out a logic, structure, Database and so on before you even think about code..