UDP Server listening to broadcast

Answer 1

Check the return value of $sock->recv, and print "$!\n". What kind of error message does it print when $string becomes empty? You may have to do $sock->connect(...) or $sock->bind(...) before calling $sock->recv().

Answer 2

I believe I found you're main problem.

The receiver has to bind either to any interface ( INADDR_ANY ) or to the network's broadcast address ( either the all networks one or the directed one ).

Here is example code for both the broadcast sender and receiver.

When using setsockopt watch out! You have to pack the last argument.

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
# broadcast sender script
use strict;
use diagnostics;
use Socket;

my $sock;
my $receiverPort = 9722;
my $senderPort = 9721;

socket($sock, PF_INET, SOCK_DGRAM, getprotobyname('udp'))   || die "socket: $!";
setsockopt($sock, SOL_SOCKET, SO_REUSEADDR, pack("l", 1))   || die "setsockopt: $!";
setsockopt($sock, SOL_SOCKET, SO_BROADCAST, pack("l", 1)) or die "sockopt: $!";
bind($sock, sockaddr_in($senderPort, inet_aton('192.168.2.103')))  || die "bind: $!";

while (1) {
    my $datastring = `date`;
    my $bytes = send($sock, $datastring, 0, 
                     sockaddr_in($receiverPort, inet_aton('192.168.2.255')));
    if (!defined($bytes)) { 
        print("$!\n"); 
    } else { 
        print("sent $bytes bytes\n"); 
    }
    sleep(2);
}

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
# broadcast receiver script
use strict;
use diagnostics;
use Socket;

my $sock;

socket($sock, PF_INET, SOCK_DGRAM, getprotobyname('udp'))   || die "socket: $!";
setsockopt($sock, SOL_SOCKET, SO_REUSEADDR, pack("l", 1))   || die "setsockopt: $!";
bind($sock, sockaddr_in(9722, inet_aton('192.168.2.255')))  || die "bind: $!"; 

# just loop forever listening for packets
while (1) {
    my $datastring = '';
    my $hispaddr = recv($sock, $datastring, 64, 0); # blocking recv
    if (!defined($hispaddr)) {
        print("recv failed: $!\n");
        next;
    }
    print "$datastring";
}