Question

Ok so I am new to socket programing and I’m making a game that is going to run from a server. I am going to try to be able to get a hundred clients to run off my server. Should I make one listener instance or one for every client? Also I’ve tried to make a hundred listeners all at 100 different ports but when I run my server I get an error while trying to start my listeners. The game is going to be a 3D RPG/MMORPG. Most of the game logic is in the clients though. What do you think that I should do?

Answer 1

If you are going to use TCP sockets, then you should create one listener socket (i.e. create a socket, bind it to a specific port and call Listen() on it). Then, when you Accept a connection and get another socket, which you use for receiving/sending data from/to client:

Socket socketListener;

// create listening socket
socketListener = new Socket(AddressFamily.InterNetwork,SocketType.Stream,ProtocolType.Tcp);
IPEndPoint ipLocal = new IPEndPoint(IPAddress.Any, 30120);      // use port 30120
//bind to local IP Address.
socketListener.Bind(ipLocal);

//start listening
socketListener.Listen(4);
while (true)   // loop that accepts client connections
{
    Socket socketWorker = socketListener.Accept();
    HandleClientConnection(socketWorker);   // your routine where you communicate with a client
}

Also, consider using sockets in asynchronous mode, that will be more efficient in terms of performance.