Networking in Java

Introduction. Basic network concepts. Architectures of distributed applications.

TCP Socket Programming
Networking with Sockets. Developing client-server applications with Java
UDP Socket Programming

Objectives:
 Learn about the basic java classes (java.net package) that supports Socket programming, namely:
o Basic network concepts
o InetAddress
o Socket
o ServerSocket
o DatagramSocket
o DatagramPacket
o MulticastSocket
 Learn how to use these classes to create Tcp, Udp and Multicast Client-Server applications.

Basic network concepts

• A computer network is an interconnected collection of autonomous computers.

What a Network Includes

• A network includes:
– Special purpose hardware devices that:
• Interconnect transmission media
• Control transmission of data
• Run protocol software
– Protocol software that:
• Encodes and formats data
• Detects and corrects problems encountered during transmission

Addressing and Routing

• Address: byte-string that identifies a node
– usually unique
• Routing: process of forwarding messages to the destination node based on its address
• Types of addresses
– unicast: node-specific
– broadcast: all nodes on the network
– multicast: some subset of nodes on the network
Layering
• Use abstractions to hide complexity
• Abstraction naturally leads to layering
• Alternative abstractions exist at each layer

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Protocols
• A protocol is a set of rules of communication. Protocols are the building blocks of a network architecture.
• Each protocol object has two different interfaces:
– service interface: operations on this protocol
– peer-to-peer interface: messages exchanged with peer
• Term “protocol” is overloaded
– specification of peer-to-peer interface
– module that implements this interface

Network Programming
• A network allows arbitrary applications to communicate.
• However, a network programmer doesn’t need to know the details of all lower-level network technologies.
• Network facilities are accessed through an Application Programming Interface (API); e.g., a Service Interface.

Network Programming in java

1. The InetAddress class:

The java.net.InetAddress class is used to represent an IP address as an object. It is also used to resolve from host
name to IP address (via the DNS) and vice versa.

No Constructors, instead, factory methods are provided.

The following are some of the methods of the InetAddress class.

Static InetAddress getByName(String host) Takes a hostname and returns InetAddress object representing its IP
address.
Static InetAddress[] getAllByName(String Takes a hostname and returns an array of InetAddress objects representing
host) its IP addresses.
static InetAddress getLocalHost() Returns an InetAddress object representing the IP address of the local host
String getHostAddress() Returns IP address string of this InetAddress object
string getHostName() Returns the hostname of this InetAddress object.
boolean isLoopbackAddress() Checks if the InetAddress is a loopback address.
boolean isMulticastAddress() Checks if the InetAddress is an IP multicast address.

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String toString() Converts this InetAddress to a String.

Example 1: IP Address Resolver.

The following example first prints the Address of the current machine and then in a loop reads a host or an address
from a user and resolving it.

import java.net.*;
import java.io.*;

public class IPAddressResolver {

public static void main (String args[]) {

try {
BufferedReader stdin = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(System.in));

InetAddress myself = InetAddress.getLocalHost();

System.out.println("MyAddress is :"+myself);

while (true) {
System.out.print("host name or IP to resolve - <exit> to quit: ");
String input = stdin.readLine();
if (input.equalsIgnoreCase("exit"))
break;

InetAddress address = InetAddress.getByName(input);

if (isHostName(input))
System.out.println("IP Addrsss is: "+ address.getHostAddress());
else
System.out.println("Host name is: "+ address.getHostName());

System.out.println("addresses for "+input+ " are: ");

InetAddress[] addresses = InetAddress.getAllByName(address.getHostName());
for (int i = 0; i < addresses.length; i++)
System.out.println(addresses[i]);
}
}
catch (UnknownHostException e) {
System.out.println("Exception: "+e);
}
catch (Exception ex) {
System.out.println("Exception: "+ex);
}
}

private static boolean isHostName(String input) {

char[] ca = input.toCharArray();
for (int i = 0; i < ca.length; i++) {
if (!Character.isDigit(ca[i]) && ca[i] != '.')
return true;
}
return false;
}
}

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 Two types of Communication
1. Connection-oriented
– Setup the link before communication.
– Similar to the phone call. We need the phone number and receiver.
– Example:- TCP (Transmission Control Protocol)
2. Connectionless
– No link needed to be set up before communication.
– Similar to send a letter. We need the address and receiver.
– Example:- UDP (User Datagram Protocol)
1. Connection-oriented communication
TCP/IP
 A protocol is a set of rules that determine how things communicate with each other
 The software which manages Internet communication follows a suite of protocols called TCP/IP
 The Internet Protocol (IP) determines the format of the information as it is transferred
 The Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) dictates how messages are reassembled and handles lost information

IP and Internet Addresses

 Each computer on the Internet has a unique IP address, such as:
130.136.1.110
 Most computers also have a unique Internet name, which also is referred to as an Internet address:
www.cs.unibo.it
 The first part indicates a particular computer (www)
 The rest is the domain name, indicating the organization (cs.unibo.it)

TCP
 Transmission Control Protocol:
RFC 793
 It’s a reliable connection-oriented protocol
 Reliability is achieved using packets indexing and generating “ack” messages for each received packet
 Creating a connection is an asymmetrical process; once the connection is established the protocol becomes
symmetric
 Ports are used to initiate a connection
Ports
 IP address isn’t enough to identify a unique server
 Many servers can exist on one machine
 IP machines also contain port numbers
 When you set up client and server, you must specify IP address and port, so they can find each other
 A port is a 16-bit number, 0-65535
• Some protocols work on specific ports
• Can’t create a server on a port below 1024
• Unless you are root (or equivalent)
• Usually the system assign the client’s port

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 TCP Standard Ports
 Below 1024, assigned by the IANA

21 FTP

23 Telnet

80 HTTP

110 POP3

119 NNTP

TCP Protocol
There is a server process P2 and a client process P1. P1 and P2 establish a communication line between them
using TCP sockets. P1 reads a message from the user and places that message on the socket. The message
reaches socket in P2. P2 reads the message from the socket and displays it. Also P2 sends back the same
message to P1 by placing it on the socket. P1 reads the message from the socket and displays it to the user.
The following are the system calls that are to be executed for connection oriented communication between two processe

Usually computers running on the Internet communicate to each other using either the Transmission Control Protocol
(TCP) or the User Datagram Protocol (UDP):

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 When you write Java programs that communicate over the network, you are programming at the application layer.
Typically, you don't need to concern yourself with the TCP and UDP layers. Instead, you can use the classes in the
java.net package. These classes provide system-independent network communication.

TCP Connections in Java

• When two applications want to communicate to each other reliably, they establish a connection and send data
back and forth over that connection.
• TCP guarantees that data sent from one end of the connection actually gets to the other end and in the same order
it was sent. Otherwise, an error is reported.
• TCP provides a point-to-point channel for applications that require reliable communications.
• TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) is a connection-based protocol that provides a reliable flow of data
between two computers.

TCP Sockets (Stream Sockets)

Java provides two classes for creating TCP sockets, namey, Socket and ServerSocket.

The java.net.Socket class:

This class is used by clients to make a connection with a server

A socket is one endpoint of a two-way communication link between two programs running on the network.
Normally, a server runs on a specific computer and has a socket that is bound to a specific port number. The
server just waits, listening to the socket for a client to make a connection request.
On the client-side: The client knows the hostname of the machine on which the server is running and the port
number to which the server is connected. To make a connection request, the client tries to rendezvous with the server
on the server's machine and port.

If everything goes well, the server accepts the connection. Upon acceptance, the server gets a new socket bound to a
different port. It needs a new socket (and consequently a different port number) so that it can continue to listen to the
original socket for connection requests while tending to the needs of the connected client.
On the client side, if the connection is accepted, a socket is successfully created and the client can use the socket
to communicate with the server.
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 To do is you should perform five basic steps:
1. Open a socket.
2. Open an input stream and output stream to the socket.
3. Read from and write to the stream according to the server's protocol.
4. Close the streams.
5. Close the socket.

Socket constructors are:

Socket(String hostname, int port)

 Throws IOException, UnknownHostException

 Connects to a server socket at the provided address (host) on the provided port

Socket(InetAddress addr, int port)

Socket(String hostname, int port, InetAddress localAddr, int localPort)

Socket(InetAddress addr, int port, InetAddress localAddr, int localPort)

Creating socket
Socket client = new Socket(“www.microsoft.com", 80);

Note that the Socket constructor attempts to connect to the remote server - no separate connect() method is provided.

Data is sent and received with output and input streams.

The Socket class has the following methods, that retruns InputStream and the OutputStream for reading and
writing to the socket

public InputStream getInputStream()

 Throws IOException
 Returns the input stream from the socket

public OutputStream getOutputStream()

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  Throws IOException
 Returns the output stream from the socket

There's also a method to close a socket:

public synchronized void close()

The following methods are also provided to set socket options:

void setReceiveBufferSize()
void setSendBufferSize()
void setTcpNoDelay()
void setSoTimeout()

The java.net.ServerSocket class

The ServerSocket class is used to by server to accept client connections

The constructors for the class are:
public ServerSocket(int port)
public ServerSocket(int port, int backlog)
public ServerSocket(int port, int backlog, InetAddress networkInterface)

Creating a ServerSocket
ServerSocket server = new ServerSocket(80, 50);

Note: a closed ServerSocket cannot be reopened

ServerSocket objects use their accept() method to connect to a client

public Socket accept()

accept() method returns a Socket object, and its getInputStream() and getOutputStream() methods provide streams
for reading and writing to the client.

Creating a server socket:

try {
serverSocket = new ServerSocket(4444);
} catch (IOException e) {
System.out.println("Could not listen on port: 4444"); System.exit(-1);
}
If the server successfully connects to its port, then the ServerSocket object is successfully created and the server
continues to the next step - accepting a connection from a client:
Socket clientSocket = null;
try {
clientSocket = serverSocket.accept();
} catch (IOException e) {// accept failed}
The accept method waits until a client starts up and requests a connection on the host and port of this server.
When a connection is requested and successfully established, the accept method returns a new Socket object which is
bound to a new port.
After the server successfully establishes a connection with a client, it communicates with the client:
PrintWriter out =

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 new PrintWriter( clientSocket.getOutputStream(), true);
BufferedReader in =
new BufferedReader( new InputStreamReader( clientSocket.getInputStream()));
Server can service clients simultaneously through the use of threads - one thread per each client connection. The
basic flow of logic in such a server is this:
while (true) {
accept a connection ;
create a thread to deal with the client ;
}
Note: There are no getInputStream() or getOutputStream() methods for ServerSocket

Example 2: The following examples show how to create TcpEchoServer and the corresponding TcpEchoClient.
import java.net.*;
import java.io.*;
import java.util.*;

public class TcpEchoServer

{
public static void main(String[] args)
{
int port = 9090;

try {
ServerSocket server = new ServerSocket(port);

while(true) {
System.out.println("Waiting for clients on port " + port);
Socket client = server.accept();

System.out.println("Got connection from "+client.getInetAddress()+":"+client.getPort());

BufferedReader reader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(client.getInputStream()));

PrintWriter writer = new PrintWriter(client.getOutputStream());

writer.println("Welcome to my server");
writer.flush();

String message = reader.readLine();

while (!(message == null || message.equalsIgnoreCase("exit"))) {

System.out.println("MessageReceived: "+message);
writer.println(message);
writer.flush();

message = reader.readLine();
}
client.close();
}
} catch(Exception ex) {
System.out.println("Connection error: "+ex);
}
}
}

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import java.net.*;
import java.io.*;
import java.util.*;

public class TcpEchoClient

{
public static void main(String[] args) {

int port = 9090;

try {
String host = InetAddress.getLocalHost().getHostName();
Socket client = new Socket(host, port);

PrintWriter writer = new PrintWriter(client.getOutputStream());

BufferedReader reader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(client.getInputStream()));

BufferedReader stdin = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(System.in));

System.out.println(reader.readLine()); //read welcome message

String message;

while (true) {
System.out.print("Enter message to echo or Exit to end : ");
message = stdin.readLine();

if (message == null || message.equalsIgnoreCase("exit"))

break;

writer.println(message);
writer.flush();
System.out.println("Echo from server: "+reader.readLine());
}
client.close();

}catch (Exception ex) {

System.out.println("Exception: "+ex);
}
}
}

Example 3: Multi-Client Tcp Servers

The following example shows how to create a multi-client TCP server.
import java.net.*;
import java.io.*;
import java.util.*;

public class MultiClientTcpEchoServer

{
public static void main(String[] args)
{
int port = 9090;

try {
ServerSocket server = new ServerSocket(port);

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 while(true) {
System.out.println("Waiting for clients on port " + port);
Socket client = server.accept();
ConnectionHandler handler = new ConnectionHandler(client);
handler.start();
}
} catch(Exception ex) {
System.out.println("Connection error: "+ex);
}
}
}

class ConnectionHandler extends Thread {

private Socket client;
BufferedReader reader;
PrintWriter writer;

static int count;

public ConnectionHandler(Socket client) {

this.client = client;
System.out.println("Got connection from "+client.getInetAddress()+":"+client.getPort());
count++;
System.out.println("Active Connections = " + count);
}

public void run() {

String message=null;

try {
reader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(client.getInputStream()));
writer = new PrintWriter(client.getOutputStream());

writer.println("Welcome to my server");
writer.flush();

message = reader.readLine();

while (!(message == null || message.equalsIgnoreCase("exit"))) {

writer.println(message);
writer.flush();

message = reader.readLine();
}

client.close();
count--;
System.out.println("Active Connections = " + count);

} catch (Exception ex) {

count--;
System.out.println("Active Connections = " + count); }} }

Exercise:- develop a socket program using GUI that performs chat operation or textual communication between client and server
using TCP protocol.

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 2. Connectionless communication
 The UDP protocol provides for communication that is not guaranteed between two applications on the
network.
 UDP sends independent packets of data, called datagrams, from one application to another.
 Sometimes reliability provided by TCP is not necessary (eg. Time Server) and you can use UDP which
doesn’t have overhead related to establishing connection.

UDP Protocol
There is a server process p2 and a client process p1. p1 and p2 communicate with each other using
datagram sockets based on User Datagram Protocol (UDP), in which there is no connection between the 2
processes.
P1 reads a message from the user and places that message on the socket. It reaches socket of p2. p2
reads the message and displays it. Also p2 sends back the same message to p1 by placing it on the socket. P1
reads the message from the socket and displays it to the user.
The following are the system calls that are to be executed for connectionless communication between 2
processes that uses UDP protocol.

UDP Sockets (Datagram Sockets)

Java provides two classes for creating UDP Sockets:

 DatagramPacket class, used to represent the data for sending and receiving.
 DatagramSocket class for creating a socket used to send and receive DatagramPackets.

The java.net.DatagramPacket class:

Constructor for receiving:

public DatagramPacket(byte[] data, int length)

Constructor for sending :

public DatagramPacket(byte[] data, int length, InetAddress addr, int port)

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 Some methods provided by the DatagramPacket class are:
public synchronized void setAddress(InetAddress addr)
public synchronized void setPort(int port)
public synchronized void setData(byte data[])
public synchronized void setLength(int length)
The java.net.DatagramSocket class:

Constructor for sending:

public DatagramSocket()

Constructor for receiving :

public DatagramSocket(int port)
public DatagramSocket(int port, InetAddress addr)

Sending UDP Datagrams involves the following steps:

 Convert the data into byte array.
 Create a DatagramPacket using the array
 Create a DatagramSocket using the packet and then call send() method

Receiving UDP Datagrams involves the following steps:

 Construct a DatagramSocket object on the port on which you want to listen
 Pass an empty DatagramPacket object to the DatagramSocket's receive() method
public synchronized void receive(DatagramPacket dp)

o The calling thread blocks until a datagram is received

o dp is filled with the data from that datagram

Notes:
 After receiving, use the getPort() and getAddress() on the received packet to know where the packet came
from. Also use getData() to retrieve the data, and getLength() to see how many bytes were in the data
 The received packet could be truncated to fit the buffer

Example 5: The following examples show how to create a UdpEchoServer and the corresponding UdpEchoClient.

import java.net.*;
import java.io.*;

public class UdpEchoServer

{
static final int port = 9999;
static final int packetSize = 1024;

public static void main(String args[]) throws SocketException{

DatagramPacket packet;
DatagramSocket socket;
byte[] data;
int clientPort;
InetAddress address;
String str;
int recvSize;

socket = new DatagramSocket(port);

while(true){
data = new byte[packetSize];
// Create packets to receive the message
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 packet = new DatagramPacket(data,packetSize);
System.out.println("to receive the packets or port: "+port);
try{
socket.receive(packet);
}catch(IOException ie){
System.out.println(" Could not Receive:"+ie.getMessage());
System.exit(0);
}
// get data about client in order to echo data back
address = packet.getAddress();
clientPort = packet.getPort();
recvSize = packet.getLength();

str = new String(data,0,recvSize);

System.out.println("Message from "+ address+":"+clientPort+": "+str.trim());

// echo data back to the client

packet = new DatagramPacket(data,recvSize,address,clientPort);
try{
socket.send(packet);

}catch(IOException ex){
System.out.println("Could not Send "+ex.getMessage());
System.exit(0);
}} } }

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import java.net.*;
import java.io.*;

public class UdpEchoClient {

static final int packetSize = 1024;
static BufferedReader stdin = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(System.in));

public static void main(String args[]) throws UnknownHostException, SocketException{

DatagramSocket socket;
DatagramPacket packet;
InetAddress address;
String messageSend;
String messageReturn;
byte[] data;
int port;

try {
System.out.print("Enter server name: ");
address = InetAddress.getByName(stdin.readLine());
System.out.print("Enter server port: ");
port = Integer.parseInt(stdin.readLine());

while (true) {
System.out.print("Enter message for the server or press enter to exit: ");
messageSend = stdin.readLine();
if(messageSend.length() == 0){
System.exit(0);
}

socket = new DatagramSocket();

data = messageSend.getBytes();
packet = new DatagramPacket(data,data.length,address,port);
socket.send(packet);

//packet is reinitialized to use it for recieving

data = new byte[packetSize];
packet = new DatagramPacket(data,data.length);
socket.receive(packet);
messageReturn = new String(data,0,packet.getLength());
System.out.println("Message Returned : "+ messageReturn);
}
}catch(IOException iee){
System.out.println("Could not receive :"+iee.getMessage() );
System.exit(0);
}
}
}

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Multicast Sockets
Multicasting is achieved in Java using the same DatagramPacket class used for normal Datagrams. This is used
together with the MulticastSocket class.

The MulticastSocket class is a subclass of the DatagramSocket class, with the following methods for joining and
leaving a multicast group added.
void joinGroup(InetAddress mcastaddr)
void leaveGroup(InetAddress mcastaddr)
void setTimeToLive(int ttl)

Example 6: The following examples shows a sample Multicast sender and receiver.
import java.io.*;
import java.net.*;

public class MulticastReceiver {

static MulticastSocket receiver;

static InetAddress group;

public static void main(String[] args) {

try {
group = InetAddress.getByName("224.100.0.5");
receiver = new MulticastSocket(9095);
System.out.println("Joined group at 224.100.0.5");
receiver.joinGroup(group);

while (true) {
byte[] buffer = new byte[1024];
DatagramPacket recvPacket = new DatagramPacket(buffer, buffer.length);
receiver.receive(recvPacket);

String message = new String(buffer, 0, recvPacket.getLength());

if (message.length() == 0) {
receiver.leaveGroup(group);
receiver.close();
break;
}
System.out.println(message);
}
}
catch (Exception ex) {
System.out.println("Exception: "+ ex);
}
}
}

import java.io.*;
import java.net.*;

public class MulticastSender {

public static void main(String[] args) {
MulticastSocket sender;
InetAddress group;
try {
group = InetAddress.getByName("224.100.0.5");
sender = new MulticastSocket(9095);
sender.setTimeToLive(32);

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 BufferedReader stdin = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(System.in));

while (true) {
System.out.print("Enter message for Multicast: ");
String message = stdin.readLine();
if (message.length() == 0) {
sender.leaveGroup(group);
sender.close();
break;
}
DatagramPacket packet =
new DatagramPacket(message.getBytes(), message.length(), group, 9095);
sender.send(packet);
}
}
catch (Exception ex) {
System.out.println("Exception: "+ ex);
}
}
}

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