UDP socket programming in winsock
UDP sockets
UDP stands for User Datagram Protocol and is an alternative protocol to TCP the most common protocol used for data transfer over the internet. UDP is different from TCP in a number of ways. Most importantly UDP is a connectionless protocol.
In the TCP protocol first a connection is established by performing the 3 step handshake. This is done by calling the connect() socket function. However there is no such connection established in UDP. In simple terms when using the udp protocol, the client throws a packet at the server and its upto the server whether it catches it or not. If it fails then the udp protocol is not concerned.
This is opposite to what happens in the TCP protocol. If the receiver side fails to receive a packet then the sender side will find it out and resend the packet till it is properly received by the receiver. This is precisely the concept of connection.
In this article we are going to do some very simple udp socket programming by making a server and a client. We shall be doing this on the windows platform and on windows the socket api is called winsock. For coding its recommended to use VC++ 6.0 or 2010 express edition which is free and can be downloaded from microsoft.com
Server
Here is the code for the server
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/*
Simple UDP Server
Silver Moon ( m00n.silv3r@gmail.com )
*/
#include<stdio.h>
#include<winsock2.h>
#pragma comment(lib,"ws2_32.lib") //Winsock Library
#define BUFLEN 512 //Max length of buffer
#define PORT 8888 //The port on which to listen for incoming data
int
main()
{
SOCKET s;
struct
sockaddr_in server, si_other;
int
slen , recv_len;
char
buf[BUFLEN];
WSADATA wsa;
slen =
sizeof
(si_other) ;
//Initialise winsock
printf
(
"\nInitialising Winsock..."
);
if
(WSAStartup(MAKEWORD(2,2),&wsa) != 0)
{
printf
(
"Failed. Error Code : %d"
,WSAGetLastError());
exit
(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
printf
(
"Initialised.\n"
);
//Create a socket
if
((s = socket(AF_INET , SOCK_DGRAM , 0 )) == INVALID_SOCKET)
{
printf
(
"Could not create socket : %d"
, WSAGetLastError());
}
printf
(
"Socket created.\n"
);
//Prepare the sockaddr_in structure
server.sin_family = AF_INET;
server.sin_addr.s_addr = INADDR_ANY;
server.sin_port = htons( PORT );
//Bind
if
( bind(s ,(
struct
sockaddr *)&server ,
sizeof
(server)) == SOCKET_ERROR)
{
printf
(
"Bind failed with error code : %d"
, WSAGetLastError());
exit
(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
puts
(
"Bind done"
);
//keep listening for data
while
(1)
{
printf
(
"Waiting for data..."
);
fflush
(stdout);
//clear the buffer by filling null, it might have previously received data
memset
(buf,
'\0'
, BUFLEN);
//try to receive some data, this is a blocking call
if
((recv_len = recvfrom(s, buf, BUFLEN, 0, (
struct
sockaddr *) &si_other, &slen)) == SOCKET_ERROR)
{
printf
(
"recvfrom() failed with error code : %d"
, WSAGetLastError());
exit
(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
//print details of the client/peer and the data received
printf
(
"Received packet from %s:%d\n"
, inet_ntoa(si_other.sin_addr), ntohs(si_other.sin_port));
printf
(
"Data: %s\n"
, buf);
//now reply the client with the same data
if
(sendto(s, buf, recv_len, 0, (
struct
sockaddr*) &si_other, slen) == SOCKET_ERROR)
{
printf
(
"sendto() failed with error code : %d"
, WSAGetLastError());
exit
(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
}
closesocket(s);
WSACleanup();
return
0;
}
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To run the above program create a project in VC++ and compile and run. In Vc++ 2010 create an empty project and then add a c file.
The output should be something similar to this
Initialising Winsock...Initialised. Socket created. Bind done Waiting for data...
Now this server can be tested with an application called netcat. Over here we shall use the ncat implementation of netcat. It comes with nmap. Download and install nmap. Then do the following in the terminal.
C:\>ncat -vv -u localhost 8888 Ncat: Version 6.01 ( http://nmap.org/ncat ) Ncat: Connected to 127.0.0.1:8888.
So ncat shows that it is connected to our udp server program. The -u option is for udp. Now we can send some data to the server from the ncat terminal which will be echoed back.
C:\>ncat -vv -u localhost 8888 Ncat: Version 6.01 ( http://nmap.org/ncat ) Ncat: Connected to 127.0.0.1:8888. hello hello world world
This is simple. Try it.
The netstat command can be used to check the udp server's open port. Here is a quick example
C:\>netstat -p UDP -a Active Connections Proto Local Address Foreign Address State UDP ----------:microsoft-ds *:* UDP ----------:isakmp *:* UDP ----------:1025 *:* UDP ----------:1037 *:* UDP ----------:1039 *:* UDP ----------:4500 *:* UDP ----------:8888 *:* UDP ----------:17500 *:* UDP ----------:ntp *:* UDP ----------:netbios-ns *:* UDP ----------:netbios-dgm *:* UDP ----------:1900 *:* UDP ----------:ntp *:* UDP ----------:1900 *:* C:\>
Now the line "----------:8888". It is our udp server that is listening on port 8888.
It is interesting to note that the netstat command will not show any connections for any client that is connected to the udp server, for example ncat.
Client
Now that we have tested our server with ncat, its time to make a client program which shall connect to the server and do the same things that the ncat program did earlier.
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/*
Simple udp client
Silver Moon (m00n.silv3r@gmail.com)
*/
#include<stdio.h>
#include<winsock2.h>
#pragma comment(lib,"ws2_32.lib") //Winsock Library
#define SERVER "127.0.0.1" //ip address of udp server
#define BUFLEN 512 //Max length of buffer
#define PORT 8888 //The port on which to listen for incoming data
int
main(
void
)
{
struct
sockaddr_in si_other;
int
s, slen=
sizeof
(si_other);
char
buf[BUFLEN];
char
message[BUFLEN];
WSADATA wsa;
//Initialise winsock
printf
(
"\nInitialising Winsock..."
);
if
(WSAStartup(MAKEWORD(2,2),&wsa) != 0)
{
printf
(
"Failed. Error Code : %d"
,WSAGetLastError());
exit
(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
printf
(
"Initialised.\n"
);
//create socket
if
( (s=socket(AF_INET, SOCK_DGRAM, IPPROTO_UDP)) == SOCKET_ERROR)
{
printf
(
"socket() failed with error code : %d"
, WSAGetLastError());
exit
(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
//setup address structure
memset
((
char
*) &si_other, 0,
sizeof
(si_other));
si_other.sin_family = AF_INET;
si_other.sin_port = htons(PORT);
si_other.sin_addr.S_un.S_addr = inet_addr(SERVER);
//start communication
while
(1)
{
printf
(
"Enter message : "
);
gets
(message);
//send the message
if
(sendto(s, message,
strlen
(message) , 0 , (
struct
sockaddr *) &si_other, slen) == SOCKET_ERROR)
{
printf
(
"sendto() failed with error code : %d"
, WSAGetLastError());
exit
(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
//receive a reply and print it
//clear the buffer by filling null, it might have previously received data
memset
(buf,
'\0'
, BUFLEN);
//try to receive some data, this is a blocking call
if
(recvfrom(s, buf, BUFLEN, 0, (
struct
sockaddr *) &si_other, &slen) == SOCKET_ERROR)
{
printf
(
"recvfrom() failed with error code : %d"
, WSAGetLastError());
exit
(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
puts
(buf);
}
closesocket(s);
WSACleanup();
return
0;
}
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The client will ask user to input a message which it will send to the udp server and the udp server shall reply back with the message
Initialising Winsock...Initialised. Enter message : hello hello Enter message : how are you how are you Enter message :
Conclusion
So communication with udp sockets is quite simple. And therefore udp sockets are used where the communication itself is very simple, for example dns requests/response etc. Or when doing some kind of multicast/broadcast. Where its not a big issue if data fails to transfer, or resending the packet is not expensive, udp can be used.
UDP has other benefits as well. Since there is not establishment of connection, no verification that the packet reached or not, it uses lesser bandwidth and is faster than TCP.
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