AW: Finding devices with dynamic IP addresses

[Arvid Staub]

hi!

>I need a way for any Windows PC on the subnet to locate the devices
>without prior knowledge of their IP address.  I'm hoping to find a
peer-to->peer solution that doesn't involve a third party (DNS) server.


IMO the most elegant way to do this is using zeroconf networking.
it uses multicast DNS and service announcement/browsers.

see http://developer.apple.com/networking/bonjour/index.html

apple's implementation is released under the apache license v2.

if you know your device's hostname, this is all you need. 
after installing the mDNS client library on your dev machine it will be
able to resolve that hostname (eg. ping mydevice.local)

otherwise, you will have to set up a service announcement (like
_telnet._tcp) and browse for your device (the dns-sd utility does that).

We're using zeroconf networking on a Virtex2-Pro FPGA (70MHz PPC405) and
it works great. I really recommend it to you.

greetings,
arvid staub