Do I have to bind an UDP socket in my client program, to receive data? (I always get WASEINVAL)...

Question

Hey There,

I have the following problem:

I am starting WSA, then I am creating a UDP socket (AF_INET, SOCK_DGRAM, IPPROTO_UDP) and try to recvfrom on this socket, but it always returns -1 and I get WSAEINVAL (10022)... I don´t know why?...

When I bind the port, that does not happen...

But it is very lame to bind the clients socket... (As far as I remember, i never had this problem before:/ )...

Anyone knows why this happens?...

(I am sending data to my server, which anwsers[ or at least, tries to^^])...

Inc::STATS CConnection::_RecvData(sockaddr* addr, std::string &strData)
{
    int ret, len, fromlen;      //return code / length of the data / sizeof(sockaddr)
    char *buffer;       //will hold the data
    char c;

    //recv length of the message
    fromlen = sizeof(sockaddr);
    ret = recvfrom(m_InSock, &c, 1, 0, addr, &fromlen);
    if(ret != 1)
    {
#ifdef __MYDEBUG__
        std::stringstream ss;
        ss << WSAGetLastError();
        MessageBox(NULL, ss.str().c_str(), "", MB_ICONERROR | MB_OK);
#endif
        return Inc::ERECV;
    }...

This is an working example i wrote a few moments ago, and it works, without the call to bind in the Client:

#pragma comment(lib, "Ws2_32.lib")

#define WIN32_LEAN_AND_MEAN

#include <WS2tcpip.h>
#include <Windows.h>
#include <iostream>

using namespace std;

int main()
{
    SOCKET sock;
    addrinfo* pAddr;
    addrinfo hints;
    sockaddr sAddr;
    int fromlen;
    const char czPort[] = "12345";
    const char czAddy[] = "incubbus.no-ip.info";

    WSADATA wsa;
    unsigned short usWSAVersion = MAKEWORD(2,2);

    char Buffer[22] = "TESTTESTTESTTESTTEST5";
    int ret;

    //Start WSA
    WSAStartup(usWSAVersion, &wsa);

    //Create Socket
    sock = socket(AF_INET, SOCK_DGRAM, IPPROTO_UDP);

    //Resolve host address
    memset(&hints, 0, sizeof(hints));
    hints.ai_family = AF_INET;
    hints.ai_protocol = IPPROTO_UDP;
    hints.ai_socktype = SOCK_DGRAM;

    if(getaddrinfo(czAddy, czPort, &hints, &pAddr))
    {
        std::cerr << "Could not resolve address...\n";
        std::cin.get();
        return 1;
    }

    //Start Transmission
    while(1)
    {
        ret = sendto(sock, Buffer, sizeof(Buffer), 0, pAddr->ai_addr, pAddr->ai_addrlen);
        if(ret != sizeof(Buffer))
        {
            std::cerr << "Could not send data\n";
            std::cin.get();
            return 1;
        }

        fromlen = sizeof(SOCKADDR);
        ret = recvfrom(sock, Buffer, sizeof(Buffer), 0, &sAddr, &fromlen);
        if(ret != sizeof(Buffer))
        {
            std::cout << "Could not receive data -  error: " << WSAGetLastError() << std::endl;
            std::cin.get();
            return 1;
        }

        Buffer[ret-1] = '\0';
        std::cout << "Received: " << Buffer << std::endl;
    }
    return 0;
}

Answer 1

Here it says the following:

Parameters

s [in]: A descriptor identifying a bound socket.

...

Return Value

WSAEINVAL: The socket has not been bound with bind, or an unknown flag was specified, or MSG_OOB was specified for a socket with SO_OOBINLINE enabled, or (for byte stream-style sockets only) len was zero or negative.

As far as I remember bind is not required for a UDP socket because a bind call is made for you by the stack. I guess it's a Windows thing to require a bind on a socket used in a recvfrom call.

Answer 2

With UDP, you have to bind() the socket in the client because UDP is connectionless, so there is no other way for the stack to know which program to deliver datagrams to for a particular port.

If you could recvfrom() without bind(), you'd essentially be asking the stack to give your program all UDP datagrams sent to that computer. Since the stack delivers datagrams to only one program, this would break DNS, Windows' Network Neighborhood, network time sync....

You may have read somewhere on the net that binding in a client is lame, but that advice only applies to TCP connections.