Connecting to socket without knowing IP address?

Question

i was wondering if I could connect to a socket without knowing the server's IP address, see the example:

Server:

from socket import *

s = socket(AF_INET, SOCK_STREAM)
s.bind(("", 8080))
s.listen(1)

conn, addr = s.accept()

EDIT: That did the trick How to make a server discoverable to LAN clients

There probably are a lot of servers running on port 8080... – jazzpi Nov 24 '13 at 18:05 — jazzpi, Nov 24 '13 at 18:05
Do you mean **all** or just **any random** server? – shad0w_wa1k3r Nov 24 '13 at 18:32 — shad0w_wa1k3r, Nov 24 '13 at 18:32

lafuzz · Answer 1 · 2013-11-24T18:22:45.093

0

Just pass in "" for the client...

s = socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_STREAM)
s.connect(("", 8080))

...and you'll be able to connect to the server.

(Obviously they both have to be running on the same machine for this to work)

edited Nov 24 '13 at 18:22

answered Nov 24 '13 at 18:10

lafuzz

74
5

for the same machine you could also say "localhost" – Nathan Schwermann Nov 24 '13 at 18:30
My goal is to achieve this with two different machines. – Kava Nov 24 '13 at 18:48
If your goal is to do this on two different machines obviously you have to know the servers IP address... – lafuzz Nov 24 '13 at 18:50

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Nov 24 '13 at 18:35

0

I'm not sure what your goal is, but normally for a TCP client socket, you need an IP address for the server you wish to connect to.

Why do you want to avoid specifying an IP address?

answered Nov 24 '13 at 18:35

user1277476

2,871
12
10

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Nov 24 '13 at 19:33

To put it short:

NO

The one thing you could do would be going through all IP addresses (Which would be only 4228250625 for IPv4, 274941996890625 for IPv6) and checking if they are listening on port 8080. The problem with this is that it would

take up a huge amount of time and
there is most likely more than one server listening on port 8080.

So, no.

Connecting to socket without knowing IP address?

3 Answers3