Is there any port that can be used to broadcast to every process?

Question

I want to broadcast a UDP message to all process. Like 255.255.255.255 is used to broadcast to all ips, is there any port to broadcast to every proceses?

What exactly are you trying to do? Won't most of those processes not understand what you're sending them? — Carl Norum, Mar 17 '12 at 20:08
Actually I'm forking some process and then I want to send them same message through UDP (it's requirement of the assignment), I thought broadcast would be an easy solution. — Uzair Farooq, Mar 17 '12 at 20:16
Do you mean: "broadcast to every port"? Not sure how the concept of processes has anything to do with UDP — Niklas B., Mar 17 '12 at 20:22
Yes, broadcast to every port. It's my assignment, the assignment requires to spawn multiple processes through fork() and then send them a message through UDP. — Uzair Farooq, Mar 17 '12 at 20:27
[Does this help?](http://stackoverflow.com/a/9310749/220636) — nabulke, Mar 17 '12 at 20:31
noop...that's about broadcast to ips. I think blueshift is right, there's no way to do that — Uzair Farooq, Mar 17 '12 at 20:35
If they are your own processes why exactly do you need to flood every port in the LAN? — user207421, Mar 18 '12 at 22:26
I don't know why this is getting downvoted. It's a legitimate question. — blueshift, Mar 19 '12 at 03:33

score 5 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 17 '12 at 20:05

5

No.

That's the short answer. The rest of this answer is just to get over the length limit.

answered Mar 17 '12 at 20:05

blueshift

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@MartinJames What makes you think I don't understand the question? – blueshift Mar 17 '12 at 20:09
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@MartinJames And how do you know he didn't understand the question? – Uzair Farooq Mar 17 '12 at 20:10

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 17 '12 at 20:41

Do you want to broadcast to every process on a local system, like we send out UDP broadcasts on a network?

For Windows, you can see this. This is no about processes, but about services.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ms685149(v=vs.85).aspx

It might be theoretically possible to get a list of services, and call their Service Control Handlers. I am not sure if it can be implemented at all, and my best guess is it cannot.

I understand that you are going to throw the same "the assignment requires it" answer, but I am very interested to know what you are trying to achieve, by broadcasting to all processes.

Is there any port that can be used to broadcast to every process?

2 Answers2