connecting a client and server app

[LB]

You don't, your firewall lets you through. You have to change its settings yourself, as you the person - the program you write is not related.

[Rechard3]

@beginner123:

@Rechard3 yes broadcasting is for local networks only so that won't work for my application

if your application's gonna be over the internet, you can make a central server that knows about all other servers, when a new server wants to take off, it shall contact the central server to publish the new server ip.
clients shall contact the central server to get a server list, and it can store the last server used.
this approach is somewhat risky, because all types of hackers will try to impersonate a new server, your job is to make this impossible(nothing is impossible).

and about that firewall issue, you can make your application use a special port, and the user shall then make a firewall rule to allow this application through this specific port.

this is only a suggestion.


i wrote:

i can see that beginner123 have some experience in networking

my sincere apologies, you might be of considerable experience in networking.
anyway, this project is really large for a programming beginner, if you're a newbie i suggest you forget about it for now and focus on the basics.

[beginner123]

yes creating a central/master server seems to be the solution here.
the servers will need to connect to this central server and those addresses need to be stored. the client will then also connect to the master server and can get the list of available servers

[beginner123]

servers connect to the master server and their address is then stored
but the client app also connects to the master server so how will the master server know not to store the clients address to?
how will the master server to be able to tell who's connecting?

[LB]

Servers say "I'm a server!" and clients say "Who are the servers?"