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I'm writing a server that, among other things, needs to be constantly sending data in different multicast addresses. The packages being sent might be received by a client side (an app) which will be switching between the mentioned addresses.

I'm using Perfect (https://github.com/PerfectlySoft/Perfect) for writing the server side, however had no luck using the Perfect-Net module nor using CocoaAsyncSocket. How could i implement both the sender and the receiver using swift? Any could snippet would be really useful.

I've been reading about multicasting and when it comes to the receiver, i've notice that in most languages (i.e. java or c#) the receiver often indicates a port number and a multicast ip-address, but when is the connection with the server being made? When does the socket bind to the real server ip-address?

Thanks in advance

doguico
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If we talk about the TCP/IP stack, only IP and UDP support broadcasts and multicasts. They're both connectionless, and this is why you see only sending and receiving to special multicast addresses, but no binds and connects. You see it in different languages because (a) protocols are language-agnostic and (b) most implementations put reasonable efforts in trying to be compatible with BSD sockets interface.

If you want that true multicast, you'll need to find a swift implementation of sockets that allow setting options. Usual names for this operation is setsockopt. Multicast sender side doesn't need anything beyond a basic UDP socket (I suggest using UDP, not IP), while sender needs to be added to a multicast group. This Python example pretty much describes it.

However, it's worth noting that routers don't route broadcasts and multicasts. Hence you cannot use it over internet. If you need to use internet in your project, I'd advise you to use TCP - or websockets if your clients are browsers - and send messages to "groups" of them manually.

u354356007
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I guess you actually want Perfect-Kafka or Perfect-Mosquitto - Message Queue which allows a server to publish live streams to the client side subscribers. Low-level sockets will not easily fulfill your requirement.

PerfectlyRock
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