Sending an InetAddress-object via udp

Question

hi there!
i'm developing a videostream server/client application. client is an applet. what i want to do is this:
since an applet has to be signed in order to perform dns-lookups, i want to work around that.
since the applet has to request the stream anyway and therefore connects the server sending udp-
packets, my idea was to let the server send back the clients IP/hostname as an InetAddress-object
inside a udp packet.
i tried the following:
info: byte[] buf = new byte[256];
on server:
InetAddress address = packet.getAddress();
buf = address.getAddress();
packet = new DatagramPacket(buf, buf.length, address, port);
socket.send(packet);
on client:
socket.receive(packet);
byte[] temp = packet.getData();
source = InetAddress.getByAddress(temp);
System.out.println(source.toString());
the system.out returns this: ı�A)
or other unreadable stuff, depending on the ip-address of the client.
i think, this has something to do with the conversion to/from bytearray, doesn't it?
can anyone show me how to send an InetAddress-object so that i get an
InetAddress-object out at the client side?
thanks in advance!
you can earn some bucks, too!
greets
honfrek

Answer 1

hi there!
thanks for your help. i got it figured out now.
now it works like this:
on server:
InetAddress address = packet.getAddress();
buf = address.getAddress();
byte[] newbuf = new byte[buf.length];
newbuf = buf;
packet = new DatagramPacket(newbuf, newbuf.length, address, port);
socket.send(packet);
on client:
byte[] newbuf = new byte[4];
packet = new DatagramPacket(newbuf,newbuf.length);
socket.receive(packet);
source = InetAddress.getByAddress(packet.getData());
i made 2 mistakes:
- i converted the InetAddress to a string
- the length of the byte[] was too big. i had a bunch of zeroes at the end