I'm working on a project that has server and client roles. I would like to have servers and clients automatically detecting each other. At a first glance, zeroconf seems to be the best solution. But it would add a dependency, Bonjour, to the project. I use Qt for the GUI and Qt has native support of broadcast and multicast. So I'm wondering if it's feasible to just use those features to replace zeroconf?
Here is a decent post about how zeroconf works.
I don't think I need the features of obtaining an IP Address and obtaining a Hostname from zeroconf. All I want is let one instance be aware of other instance's existence.
My current plan is combining broadcast and multicast. Each server chooses a unique multicast group and broadcast this group to the others. When a client wants to connect a to specific server, it joins the corresponding group.
Some people mention that it's normal that routers blocking local broadcast. If this is true, my plan would not be feasible.
Is there any standard way to implement this rather than using zeroconf?
