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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-06-05T17:45:08+00:00

I’m developing a multiple client / multiple server program in C#, and before I

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I’m developing a multiple client / multiple server program in C#, and before I got down to the nitty gritty, I was wondering if anyone has ever worked on a similar project and might be able to share their tips / ideas for implementation.

  • The servers will sit on many PCs, and listen for incoming connections from clients (Or should the Servers broadcast, and the clients listen?).
  • When a client starts, it should populate a list of potential server IP addresses automatically.
  • When a server closes, the client should remove that server from it’s list.
  • When a new server starts, the clients should be notified and have it added to their list.
  • A server may also act as a client, and should be able to see itself, as well as all other servers.
  • A message sent from a client to the server, that affects the server, should broadcast the change to all connected clients.
  • Should my server be a Windows Service? What advantages/disadvantages does that present?

Any ideas on how I might go about getting started on this? I’ve been looking into UDP Multicast, and LAN Scans. I’m using C# and .NET 4.0

EDIT: Found this: http://code.google.com/p/lidgren-network-gen3/ Does anyone have any experience with it and can recommend/not recommend it?

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  1. Editorial Team

    I would suggest NetPeerTcpBinding WCF communications to create a Peer Mesh. Clients and Servers would all join a mesh using a Peer resolver. You can use PNRP or create a custom peer resolver (.Net actually provides you with an implementation called CustomPeerResolverService). See Peer To Peer Networking documentation.

    Also you can implement a Discovery service using DiscoveryProxy. With a discovery service, services can announce their endpoints. The discovery service can then service find requests (see FindCriteria) to return endpoints that match the requests. This is referred to as Managed Discovery. Another mode is Ad Hoc Discovery. Each service will announce their endpoints via UDP and discovery clients will probe the network for these endpoints.

    I have actually implemented a Managed Discovery service in combination with Peer 2 Peer WCF networking to provide a redundant mesh of discovery services that all share published service endpoints via P2P. Using Managed Discovery I have found performs far better as Ad Hoc Discovery using UDP probing is slower and has some limitations crossing some network boundaries while Managed Discovery leverages a centralized repository of announced service endpoints.

    Either/both technologies I think can lead to your solution.

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