C# Networking -- Computer Discovery

[Dave.Rich]

Hello,

I am working on a program where I need to be able to send a file over the network to another computer.

I would like to have a sort of system setup where each computer that is running my program will show up in an "address book" of sorts, so you can get the computer name from the list, and use that as the destination to send files to.

This is quite a big task for me but I figure it'll be a great learning process. I am a bit overwhelmed as to where to start mind you as I've never really done any cross-network programming.

Can anyone offer any sort of reading / areas to focus on for creating a program that is able to access other machines on the network.

[saravind84]

Hi Dave,

You can go for a central server to store this information. Your client program should register with the server each time it is installed on a new machine. Using this approach your central server will have the info of all the clients.
Here the central server can act as a directory to all the clients.

Thanks
Aravind

[Dave.Rich]

Hi Dave,

You can go for a central server to store this information. Your client program should register with the server each time it is installed on a new machine. Using this approach your central server will have the info of all the clients.
Here the central server can act as a directory to all the clients.

Thanks
Aravind

Thanks, I was thinking of something like this, this would allow me access machines on any network provided that I had my ports forwarded on the server side right?

I was planning on demoing this at my school, where they currently restrict outgoing access on certain ports. I know port 80 and some other ports are safe is there a guide for beginners to get into networking somehow? I've never done any socket work or any tcp/ip programming.