bediger4000 / udp-echo-server

Golang echo server, using UDP

Quick and dirty UDP-based echo server and client in Go

Toy UDP server and client in Go. I did this to acquaint myself with Go's standard package net, specifically the UDP-related functions.

Because I learned as I wrote, here's a weird stylistic mismatch between how server.go does UDP sockets, and how client.go does some "general" socket thing. To reconcile this mismatch, I did client2.go with just UDP functions to match server.go.

I also added a Python 3 client, because I have no where else to put it.

Echo protocol

The server listens for UDP packets on a particular port number. It blocks on net.ReadFromUDP() method call.

Should the server ever receive bytes, it prints out how many bytes it received from where, then writes that same number of bytes back to wherever it received them from.

The client creates a UDP connection to some IP (v4 or v6) or hostname and a port number, based on command line information. Then it writes bytes of a string, also from the command line, to the UDP connection. It waits until some bytes come back to it, or an error occurs. Then it exists.

Simple, and yet full of problems. No timeouts, no set number of bytes. Client or server could hang forever waiting for a packet that never arrives.

Building

$ go build server.go
$ go build client.go
$ go build client2.go

The python 3 client is interpreted and does not need "building".

Usage

In Window 1:

$ ./server :: 7890
Accepting a new packet

In Window 2:

$ ./client udp localhost 7890 'some string'

Or:

$ ./client2 fe80::a11:96ff:fe7f:6d74 7890 'some string' [eth0]

Or:

$ ./client1.py localhost 7890 'some string'

The final argument of ./client2 is optional. It's the name of the network interface to route the packets through. Note the contents of net.UDPAddr:

type UDPAddr struct {
        IP   IP
        Port int
        Zone string // IPv6 scoped addressing zone
}

The Zone element is used for routing link-local addresses (fe80: prefix). The interface name works as the zone. Called with a 4th argument, client2 uses that argument as the "zone".