[ENet-discuss] ENet-discuss Digest, Vol 75, Issue 5

[dean.enet at codeka.com]

> Thanks for the replies. I do seem to have had some success
> with setting the server with: 
>
> address.host = ENET_HOST_ANY;
>
> And then the client as     address.host = ENET_HOST_BROADCAST;
>
> Once connected it seems to work fine, but it does seem flaky
> to connect sometimes. I've also found that decreasing the
> timeout time for the client seems to have improved matter
> eg enet_host_service(sClient, &event, 100) (from like 5000).

I'm not sure it's really a good idea to be using ENet to do broadcasts. The
problem is if there happens to be two hosts on the local network listening
on the same port, they're *both* going to get the connection request and
that's obviously going to confuse the client. Even if you establish a
connection to one host, if another one comes up while you're still talking
to the first, it's going to be confused as well, since it'll think you're
talking to it.

I think the best solution is as Emmanuel said: you just do a single packet
broadcast (using normal sockets, not ENet) "are there any servers?" then the
servers can respond (with a broadcast of their own) "I am at IP w.x.y.z".
Then you can do a normal ENet connection to w.x.y.z. That way you don't have
to worry about multiple servers being on the local network or anything like
that.

Dean.