I have some problems with a device brought for signal capturing (vilistus), as its software is supposed to send data to a tcp port (#123) during capturing and I used a c# code with a tcp listener to receive the data from the same port but the program is blocked at the accepttcpclient() command line and no data is received.
TcpClient client = this.tcpListener.AcceptTcpClient();
It sounds like a client isn't connecting to the listener. When you call AcceptTcpClient on a TcpListener the application will hang there waiting for a client to connect which seems to be the issue you're having.
You can get around this issue by doing a BeginAcceptTcpClient which will free the application and allow the program to continue executing while you wait for a client. When a client then connects a delegate will be called and then you can start processing the client, reading data etc. So for example:
class Comms
{
TcpListener listener;
TcpClient client;
// Starts listening for a tcp client
public void StartListener()
{
listener = new TcpListener(IPAddress.Any, 123);
listener.BeginAcceptTcpClient(new AsyncCallback(ClientCallback), listener);
}
// Callback for when a client connects on the port
void ClientCallback(IAsyncResult result)
{
listener = (TcpListener)result.AsyncState;
try
{
client = listener.EndAcceptTcpClient(result);
// From here you can access the stream etc and read data
}
catch (IOException e)
{
// Handle any exceptions here
}
}
}
Providing the client connects correctly you will then be free to access the clients NetworkStream and then read and write data to the client. Heres a quick reference and example for you to take a look at:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.net.sockets.tcplistener.beginaccepttcpclient.aspx
When it comes to the reading and writing of data you will have a similar lock up problem with the client's NetworkStream Read and Write functions. For this problem you have two possible solutions:
Set a timeout for the read and write functions, by setting the ReadTimeout and WriteTimeout properties of the NetworkStream.
Use a similar callback method as with BeginAcceptTcpClient by using the BeginRead and BeginWrite functions found in the NetworkStream.
Personally I prefer the second option as the first won't free the program until the timeout occurs but they're both viable options and it depends which one you'd prefer to implement. You can go here for more information about the NetworkStream:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.net.sockets.networkstream.aspx
Hope this helps
It sounds strange that the device is being the client. Are you sure that you should not use tcpClient.Connect() to the device on port 123?
Why?
How should the device know that you got a server running? It can't try to connect forever.
How do the device know that port 123 is free for your application in your PC?
Related
Again, I need invaluable help of you.
I have project set up using HttpListener class to bind and listen on all found IPs and port(in this example) 1337.
Now, local connections(from my own computer typing IP:Port into address bar from browser) work just fine, but any connection from remote devices, even in the same wifi network, just don't hit listener.
Example code(instead of all found IPs I listen to all connections at port 1337)
HttpListener httplistener = new HttpListener();
httplistener.Prefixes.Add("http://+:80/");
httplistener.Start();
HttpListenerContext ctx = httplistener.GetContext();
Console.WriteLine("got context");
ctx.Response.OutputStream.Write(Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes("hello"), 0, 5);
Console.WriteLine("response written");
ctx.Response.Close();
Console.WriteLine("response closed");
Console.ReadKey();
Well, from any browser I get response as it should be(and under normal circumstances I use it I get JSON object for my JS app), but from any device in wifi network I got timeout and I never got even to the context.
TcpListener on the other hand works properly. Why? I know the difference more or less and in TcpListener I can get a raw connection(like from Putty):
TcpListener tcplistener = new TcpListener(endpoint);
tcplistener.Start();
TcpClient tcpclient = tcplistener.AcceptTcpClient();
int dataAvailable = tcpclient.Available;
Console.WriteLine("connection accepted");
using(StreamWriter sw = new StreamWriter(tcpclient.GetStream()))
{
sw.WriteLine("<html><body>hello</body></html>");
}
Console.WriteLine("response written");
tcpclient.Close();
Console.WriteLine("waiting for next connection");
Is it possible to somehow use HttpListener anyway or route connections to it? I really need possibility to connect to my app from every device through a html page. For any advices thank you. Tag #windows-phone-8.1 added because tried to connect from that device to HttpListener too with no positive effect.
Ok, case closed. After exhausting every possible option, sniffing packets revealed that send packets are lost in translation and never get to my computer where server is started. I pushed on IT and they declined everything but after confronting with hard evidence they had to yield and admit that someone made this specific subnetwork work in a way that separates every client from each other.
So, when I manually opened a socket I was able to connect(and sometimes not, but I thought it was just my wrong and messy implementation) but every other piece of traffic was mowed down before getting a chance to arrive at my network card.
I have a separate thread on both client and server that are reading/writing data to/from a socket.
I am using synchronous TcpClient im (as suggested in documention):
https://msdn.microsoft.com/cs-cz/library/system.net.sockets.tcpclient%28v=vs.110%29.aspx
When connection is closed .Read()/.Write() throws an exception. Does it mean that when .Write() method does not throw the data were delivered correctly to the other party or do I need to implement custom ACK logic?
I read documentation for both Socket and TcpClient class and none of them describe this case.
All that a returning send() call means (or any wrapper you use, like Socket or TcpClient) on a streaming, blocking internet socket is that the bytes are placed in the sending machine's buffer.
MSDN Socket.Send():
A successful completion of the Send method means that the underlying system has had room to buffer your data for a network send.
And:
The successful completion of a send does not indicate that the data was successfully delivered.
For .NET, the underlying implementation is WinSock2, documentation: send():
The successful completion of a send function does not indicate that the data was successfully delivered and received to the recipient. This function only indicates the data was successfully sent.
A call to send() returning does not mean the data was successfully delivered to the other side and read by the consuming application.
When data is not acknowledged in time, or when the other party sends a RST, the Socket (or whichever wrapper) will become in a faulted state, making the next send() or recv() fail.
So in order to answer your question:
Does it mean that when .Write() method does not throw the data were delivered
correctly to the other party or do I need to implement custom ACK logic?
No, it doesn't, and yes, you should - if it's important to your application that it knows another party has read that particular message.
This would for example be the case if a server-sent message indicates a state change of some sort on the client, which the client must apply to remain in sync. If the client doesn't acknowledge that message, the server cannot know for certain that the client has an up-to-date state.
In that case you could alter your protocol so that certain messages have a required response which the receiver must return. Do note that implementing an application protocol is surprisingly easy to do wrong. If you're inclined, you could implement having various protocol-dictated message flows using a state machine,
for both the server and the client.
Of course there are other solutions to that problem, such as giving each state a unique identifier, which is verified with the server before attempting any operation involving that state, triggering the retry of the earlier failed synchronization.
See also How to check the capacity of a TCP send buffer to ensure data delivery, Finding out if a message over tcp was delivered, C socket: does send wait for recv to end?
#CodeCaster's answer is correct and highlights the .NET documentation specifying the behavior of .Write(). Here is some complete test code to prove that he is right and the other answers saying things like "TCP guarantees message delivery" are unambiguously wrong:
using System;
using System.Net;
using System.Net.Sockets;
using System.Text;
using System.Threading;
namespace TestEvents
{
class Program
{
static void Main(string[] args)
{
// Server: Start listening for incoming connections
const int PORT = 4411;
var listener = new TcpListener(IPAddress.Any, PORT);
listener.Start();
// Client: Connect to listener
var client = new TcpClient();
client.Connect(IPAddress.Loopback, PORT);
// Server: Accept incoming connection from client
TcpClient server = listener.AcceptTcpClient();
// Server: Send a message back to client to prove we're connected
const string msg = "We are now connected";
NetworkStream serverStream = server.GetStream();
serverStream.Write(ASCIIEncoding.ASCII.GetBytes(msg), 0, msg.Length);
// Client: Receive message from server to prove we're connected
var buffer = new byte[1024];
NetworkStream clientStream = client.GetStream();
int n = clientStream.Read(buffer, 0, buffer.Length);
Console.WriteLine("Received message from server: " + ASCIIEncoding.ASCII.GetString(buffer, 0, n));
// Client: Close connection and wait a little to make sure we won't ACK any more of server's messages
Console.WriteLine("Client is closing connection");
clientStream.Dispose();
client.Close();
Thread.Sleep(5000);
Console.WriteLine("Client has closed his end of the connection");
// Server: Send a message to client that client could not possibly receive
serverStream.Write(ASCIIEncoding.ASCII.GetBytes(msg), 0, msg.Length);
Console.WriteLine(".Write has completed on the server side even though the client will never receive the message. server.Client.Connected=" + server.Client.Connected);
// Let the user see the results
Console.ReadKey();
}
}
}
The thing to note is that execution proceeds normally all the way through the program and serverStream has no indication that the second .Write was not successful. This is despite the fact there is no way that second message can ever be delivered to its recipient. For a more detailed look at what's going on, you can replace IPAddress.Loopback with a longer route to your computer (like, have your router route port 4411 to your development computer and use the externally-visible IP address of your modem) and monitor that port in Wireshark. Here's what the output looks like:
Port 51380 is a randomly-chosen port representing the client TcpClient in the code above. There are double packets because this setup uses NAT on my router. So, the first SYN packet is my computer -> my external IP. The second SYN packet is my router -> my computer. The first PSH packet is the first serverStream.Write. The second PSH packet is the second serverStream.Write.
One might claim that the client does ACK at the TCP level with the RST packet, but 1) this is irrelevant to the use of TcpClient since that would mean TcpClient is ACKing with a closed connection and 2) consider what happens when the connection is completely disabled in the next paragraph.
If I comment out the lines that dispose the stream and close the client, and instead disconnect from my wireless network during the Thread.Sleep, the console prints the same output and I get this from Wireshark:
Basically, .Write returns without Exception even though no PSH packet was even dispatched, let alone had received an ACK.
If I repeat the process above but disable my wireless card instead of just disconnecting, THEN the second .Write throws an Exception.
Bottom line, #CodeCaster's answer is unambiguously correct on all levels and more than one of the other answers here are incorrect.
TcpClient uses TCP protocol which itself guarantees data delivery. If the data is not delivered, you will get an exception. If no exception is thrown - the data has been delivered.
Please see the description of the TCP protocol here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmission_Control_Protocol
Every time the data is sent, the sending computer waits for the acknowledgement packet to arrive, and if it has not arrived, it will re-try the send until it is either successful, timed out, or permanent network failure has been detected (for example, cable disconnect). In the latter two cases an exception will be thrown
Therefore, TCP offeres guaranteed data delivery in the sense that you always know whether the destination received your data or not
So, to answer your question, you do NOT need to implement custom ACK logic when using TcpClient, as it will be redundant
Guarantee is never possible. What you can know is that data has left your computer for delivery to other side in the order of data was sent.
If you want a very reliable system, you should implement acknowledgement logic by yourself based on your needs.
I agree with Denis.
From the documentation (and my experience): this method will block until all bytes were written or throw an exception on error (such as disconnect). If the method returns you are guaranteed that the bytes were delivered and read by the other side on the TCP level.
Vojtech - I think you missed the documentation since you need to look at the Stream you're using.
See: MSDN NetworkStream.Write method, in the remarks section:
The Write method blocks until the requested number of bytes is sent or a SocketException is thrown.
Notes
Assuring that the message was actually read properly by the listening application is another issue and the framework cannot guarantee this.
In async methods (such as BeginWrite or WriteAsync) it's a different ballgame since the method returns immediately and the mechanism to assure completion is different (EndWrite or task completion paired with a code).
This is my listening function and connection function
Socket Listen
public void Listen(){
IPEndPoint ep = new IPEndPoint(IPAddress.Any, PortNumber);
Listen.Bind(ep);
Listen.Listen(10);
Listen.BeginAccept(new AsyncCallback(NewConnection), null);}
public void NewConnection(IAsyncResult asyn)
{
Socket Accepted = Listen.EndAccept(asyn);
Listen.BeginAccept(new AsyncCallback(NewConnection), null);
SomeFunction(Accepted);
}
the code works fine and there is no problem - I traced the code to see how to work with different clients and I understand the flow. However, I don't understand how can 1 socket serve different clients. Does it time multiplex between the clients over the socket?
I read on MSDN that Accepted in my code can be only used for the established connection and can't be used any further - that part I don't understand. What actually happens when the client tries to connect to the server socket? Does EndAccept return a totally different socket with different port to establish the connection and keep listening with the same socket to accept more requests at the same time?
What you've said is basically correct, based on my understanding. The Accepted socket is not the same as Listen. After you EndAccept, you can kick off another BeginAccept async call with your listen socket, and you can use the newly created socket to communicate with your remote peer.
To verify, you can check the local port of the listen socket and the connected socket; they should be different.
Ok so I am new to socket programing and I'm making a game that is going to run from a server. I am going to try to be able to get a hundred clients to run off my server. Should I make one listener instance or one for every client? Also I've tried to make a hundred listeners all at 100 different ports but when I run my server I get an error while trying to start my listeners. The game is going to be a 3D RPG/MMORPG. Most of the game logic is in the clients though. What do you think that I should do?
If you are going to use TCP sockets, then you should create one listener socket (i.e. create a socket, bind it to a specific port and call Listen() on it). Then, when you Accept a connection and get another socket, which you use for receiving/sending data from/to client:
Socket socketListener;
// create listening socket
socketListener = new Socket(AddressFamily.InterNetwork,SocketType.Stream,ProtocolType.Tcp);
IPEndPoint ipLocal = new IPEndPoint(IPAddress.Any, 30120); // use port 30120
//bind to local IP Address.
socketListener.Bind(ipLocal);
//start listening
socketListener.Listen(4);
while (true) // loop that accepts client connections
{
Socket socketWorker = socketListener.Accept();
HandleClientConnection(socketWorker); // your routine where you communicate with a client
}
Also, consider using sockets in asynchronous mode, that will be more efficient in terms of performance.
You only ever have one listener per server endpoint. The listener will then create a connection for the client that uses a different port. It is this connection you actually use for communication.
I've just started learning Sockets through various Google searches but I'm having some problems figuring it out how to properly use Sockets in C# and I'm in the need of some help.
I have a test application (Windows Forms) and on a different class (which is actually in it's own .dll, but that's irrelevant) I have all the server/client code for my sockets code.
Question 1)
On my test application, on the server part, the user can click the "start listening" button and the server part of my sockets application should start listening for connections on the specified address and port, so far so good.
However, the application will be blocked and I can't do anything until someone connects to the server. What if no one connects? How should I handle that? I could specify a receive timeout but what then? It throws an exception, what can I do with that? What I would like is to have some sort of activity on the main application so the user knows the application didn't froze and is waiting for connections. But if a connection doesn't come, it should timeout and close everything.
Maybe I should use asynchronous calls to send/receive methods but they seem confusing and I was not able to make it work, only synchronous work (I'll post my current code below).
Question 2)
Do I need to close anything when some send/receive call times out. As you'll see on my current code, I have a bunch of closes on the socket, but this doesn't feel right somehow. But it also doesn't feel right when an operation times out and I don't close the socket.
In conclusion of my two questions.... I would like an application that doesn't block so the user knows the server is waiting for a connection (with a little marquee animation for instance). If a connection is never established after a period of time, I want to close everything that should be closed. When a connection is established or if it doesn't happen after a period of time, I would like to inform the main application of the result.
Here's some of my code, the rest is similar. The Packet class is a custom class that represents my custom data unit, it's just a bunch of properties based on enums for now, with methods to convert them to bytes and back into properties.
The function that starts to listen for connections is something like this:
public void StartListening(string address, int port) {
try {
byte[] bufferBytes = new byte[32];
if(address.Equals("0.0.0.0")) {
udpSocket.Bind(new IPEndPoint(IPAddress.Any, port));
} else {
udpSocket.Bind(new IPEndPoint(IPAddress.Parse(address), port));
}
remoteEndPoint = new IPEndPoint(IPAddress.Any, 0);
int numBytesReceived = udpSocket.ReceiveFrom(bufferBytes, ref remoteEndPoint);
if(numBytesReceived == 0) {
udpSocket.Close();
return;
}
Packet syncPacket = new Packet(bufferBytes);
if(syncPacket.PacketType != PacketType.Control) {
udpSocket.Close();
return;
}
} catch {
if(udpSocket != null) {
udpSocket.Close();
}
}
}
I'm sure that I have a bunch of unnecessary code but I'm new at this and I'm not sure what do, any help fixing up my code and how to solve the issues above is really appreciated.
EDIT:
I should probably have stated that my requirements are to use UDP and implement these things myself in the application layer. You can consider this as homework but I haven't tagged as such because the code is irrelevant and will not be part of my grade and my problem (my question) is in "how to code" as my Sockets experience is minimal and it's not taught.
However I must say that I solved my problem for now I think... I was using threading on the demo application which was giving me some problems, now I'm using it in the protocol connections, makes more sense and I can easily change my custom protocol class properties and read those from the demo application.
I have specified a timeout and throw a SocketException if it reaches the timeout. Whenever an exception like this is caught, the socket connection is closed. I'm just talking about the connection handshake, nothing more. If no exceptions are caught, the code probably went smooth and the connection is established.
Please adapt your answers accordingly. Right now it doesn't make sense for me to marky any of them as the accepted answer, hope you understand.
You have got stuff a bit wrong.
First of all, UDP is connection-less. You do not connect or disconnect. All you do is to send and receive (must specify destination each time). You should also know that the only thing UDP promises is that a complete message arrives on each read. UDP do not guarantee that your messages arrive in the correct order or that they arrive at all.
TCP on the other hand is connection-based. You connect, send/receive and finally disconnect. TCP is stream-based (while UDP is message-based) which means that you can get a half message in the first read and the other half at the second read. TCP promises you that everything will arrive and in the correct order (or will die trying ;). So using TCP means that you should have some kind of logic to know when a complete message has arrived and a buffer that you use to build the complete message.
The next big question was about blocking. Since you are new at this, I recommend that you use Threads to handle sockets. Put the listener socket in one thread and each connecting socket in a separate thread (5 connected clients = 5 threads).
I also recommend that you use TCP since it's easier to build complete messages than ordering messages and build a transaction system (which will needed if you want to make sure that all messages arrives to/from clients).
Update
You still got UDP wrong. Close doesn't do anything other than cleaning up system resources. You should do something like this instead:
public void MySimpleServer(string address, int port)
{
try
{
byte[] bufferBytes = new byte[32];
if(address.Equals("0.0.0.0")) {
udpSocket.Bind(new IPEndPoint(IPAddress.Any, port));
} else {
udpSocket.Bind(new IPEndPoint(IPAddress.Parse(address), port));
}
remoteEndPoint = new IPEndPoint(IPAddress.Any, 0);
while (serverCanRun)
{
int numBytesReceived = udpSocket.ReceiveFrom(bufferBytes, ref remoteEndPoint);
// just means that one of the clients closed the connection using Shutdown.
// doesnt mean that we cant continue to receive.
if(numBytesReceived == 0)
continue;
// same here, loop to receive from another client.
Packet syncPacket = new Packet(bufferBytes);
if (syncPacket.PacketType != PacketType.Control)
continue;
HandlePacket(packet, endPoint);
}
} catch {
if(udpSocket != null) {
udpSocket.Close();
}
}
}
See? since there are no connection it's just waste of time to close a UDP socket to start listening from another one. The same socket can receive from ALL udp clients that know the correct port and address. That's what the remoteEndPoint is for. It tells which client that send the message.
Update 2
Small update to make a summary of all my comments.
UDP is connectionless. You can never detect if a connection have been established or disconnected. The Close method on a UDP socket will only free system resources. A call on client.Close() will not notify the server socket (as it will with TCP).
The best way to check if a connection is open is to create a ping/pong style of packet. i.e. the client sends a PING message and the server responds with a PONG. Remember that UDP will not try to resend your messages if they do not arrive. Therefore you need to resend the PING a couple of times before assuming that the server is down (if you do not receive a PONG).
As for clients closing you need to send your own message to the server telling it that the the client is going to stop talking to the server. For reliability the same thing goes here, keep resending the BYE message until you receive a reply.
imho it's mandatory that you implement a transactional system for UDP if you want reliability. SIP (google rfc3261) is an example of a protocol which uses transactions over UDP.
From your description I feel you should use TCP sockets instead of UDP. The difference is
TCP - You wait for a connection at a particuler IP:Port some user can connect to it and until the socket is closed can communicate by sending and receiveing information. This is like calling someone on phone.
UDP - you wait for a message at some IP:Port. User who wants to communicate just sends a message through UDP. You will receive the message through UDP. The order of delivery is not guaranteed. This is more like sending a snail mail to someone. There is no dedicated communication channel established.
Now coming to your problem
Server
Create a Socket with TCP family.
Either create a thread and accept the connection in that thread or use the BeginAccept apis of Socket.
In the main thread you can still display the ticker or whatever you want to do.
Client
Connect to the server.
Communicate by sending and receiving data.